


Home with you (two corpses we were)

by All_that_I_am



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Female Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Child Abuse, Did I Mention Angst?, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Post-Bahrain (Agents of SHIELD), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Bahrain (Agents of SHIELD), SOFT BI LADIES, Suicidal Thoughts, These ladies make me cry every time tbh, post 6x13
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:00:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23590462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/All_that_I_am/pseuds/All_that_I_am
Summary: Melinda May has died twice.The first time she saw Phil.This time she sees Bobbi.(A character study exploring the relationship between two SHIELD specialists - one of whom may be dead)
Relationships: Melinda May/Bobbi Morse, Phil Coulson & Melinda May, Victoria Hand/Isabelle Hartley (background)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

Last time she died, she saw Phil. 

This time? 

She sees Bobbi.

She’s standing in their living room - a quiet balancing act between the two of them. Melinda’s plants sit by the open window, bathing in the sun, whilst Bobbi’s knives lay taped underneath the ledge they sit on. She used to chide Bobbi for hiding weapons in all of the rooms - an open invite for their work to follow them home - but she’d never made an active move to get rid of them. In truth, Melinda knew how much safer Bobbi felt with weapons within reach, despite both of their skills in hand-to-hand combat. 

Even when nothing else remained, she continued to find weapons taped behind sofas; under floor boards; behind photo frames - so much like her, Melinda thinks, left in places long-forgotten.

Melinda’s fingers mindlessly drift to her abdomen - grasping air in search of the wound that had just ripped her open. No blood. No wound. No searing pain at her touch.

 _Right then,_ she thinks, _definitely dead._

Melinda closes her eyes - listening to the sounds of a past life. The light _whoosh_ of leaves against the smudged window panes, the low hum of the old refrigerator. The tinkling of Bobbi’s wind chimes adorning their tiny balcony. The room smells of oak floorboards and coffee and coconut shampoo. Of her own weathered bike leathers laying draped on the back of a kitchen chair.

The room is open and light as she opens her eyes again, but it’s noticeably empty without her.

“Mel.”

And just like that, there stands Bobbi - looking back at Melinda while lazily brewing coffee on the stove. Like Melinda had never left, never died. Like they had been together for all of these years.

May feels panic claw up her throat seeing her in the place that comes next, when she knows that she’s just died. Phil, at least, had already died once by the time May saw him - it wasn’t unreasonable to think that he’d died again since. But Bobbi was too young, too strong, too _loved_ for Melinda to begin processing the idea of her death. 

_This isn’t real._

Bobbi brings two mugs down from the cupboard with a slight _hmpf_ before walking the three slow steps it took to bridge their distance. Within moments, there are hands on her hips in a way they hadn’t been for a long while. Melinda, against herself, feels her heart beat more rapidly than before. Lips find their way to her neck, down her arms, across her collarbones - hands moving down down _down._

Bobbi’s murmuring words against her skin, but she can’t make out anything even vaguely coherent besides her own name. Her heart sings out with exhaustion and sorrow and a desire almost too hot to touch - none of which she expected to still feel when she was _dead_ mind you - before she can’t take it anymore.

_“Stop.”_

Bobbi freezes - lips caught against the hollow of Melinda’s throat; fingers splayed out across her ribs. They stand there, breathing shakily against one another - neither committing to eye contact - for several moments before Bobbi sighs and abruptly pulls away, returning to the stove as if nothing had happened. Melinda’s breath catches at the blasè approach Bobbi has taken towards their mortality. 

Melinda shakes her head. This isn’t her Bobbi; _can’t_ be her Bobbi.

Simmons, she remembers, used to talk about death - explaining how millions of psychedelic molecules flood the body within nanoseconds of dying. How they make you see things; _feel_ things as the last traces of life slow to a final grinding halt inside. _This_ Bobbi is a hallucination; this reality an illusion - lasting numerous infinities until she finally bleeds out in Daisy’s arms. 

Melinda can’t decide whether to fight against it, or sink into its lovely warmth.

For the moment, however, there are blue eyes winking at her from the kitchen and, God, she al _most_ smiles at the sight - dirty blonde hair still damp from the shower, long arms tanned from a summer come early; piano fingers holding a pot of coffee out towards her. 

“You want a cup?”

A moment’s pause -

“You know the answer to that.”

Bobbi smirks, reaching into the cupboard to grab a small box of green tea - proceeding to dump a spoonful into the strainer already sitting in Melinda’s favourite mug.

_Huh._

“I’m dead.”

“You don’t look dead to me,” Bobbi lets out a laugh.

“Then what? What am I doing here?”

Melinda glares and Bobbi rolls her eyes back, continuing to fix their drinks without pause.

“So _impatient,"_ she tuts under her breath.

Melinda does smile at that. How many mornings had they showered together because Bobbi was too impatient to wait until Melinda was done? How many mornings had they ended up late for mission debrief anyway, because of said shower? 

“Pot, kettle.”

Bobbi’s laughter is golden and full, filling Melinda with too many feelings to properly process.

“ _To_ _uchè”_

Melinda catches herself grinning (Daisy _would_ be horrified) and berates herself for falling into this so quickly. All it took for her to accept death was the sight of Bobbi, bathed in sunshine in their _kitchen_ of all the goddamnned places and -

“Stop over thinking it Mel,” Bobbi’s hands come to rest warmly against her cheeks, “what we have here is good.” 

Melinda wants to melt into her touch but something’s still not right - she needs to go, she needs to get _back._ She pulls away from Bobbi, hands outstretched to hold her back.

“What about Phil, and Daisy. The rest of my _team_. I can’t just leave them Bobbi."

“Melinda-”

“No. You’re not even real - my mind is just playing tricks on me.”

Not-Bobbi looks quite affronted at that, but quickly recovers.

“Mel, stop fighting this, it won't do you any good - besides," Bobbi drawls with a sly grin, "there are _much_ better things to do.”

She winks and Melinda feels her gut sink. Things with Bobbi hadn’t been this comfortable since before Bahrain, before their divorce. Even when they reconnected on the Bus, things were different to how they were in the early days. A by-product of time and trauma and distrust.

“This isn’t real," she says, shaking her head to erase Bobbi from her vision, before a thought catches her out breathless.

She spins back to face her.

“Am I in the framework?”

“ _No,_ Melinda.” Bobbi replies quicker and softer than before. As if she knows how much Melinda still thinks about her time there; as if she _knows_ about the nights she wakes up in a sweat at the thought of being trapped there whilst her body lay slumped, half-dead elsewhere.

“Like you would tell me if it was,” she grumbles, turning away. Melinda feels her way around the kitchen wall, pads of her fingers pressed across each cupboard, searching for a break, a glitch in the matrix to tell her what’s real. After all that she’s been through, she needs to know for sure. Nothing shows, but she’s not convinced. Whether life or death is on the other side of this place, she knows she can’t stay in limbo with this Bobbi forever. 

(Especially when said woman is looking at her like that; this half grin, one strap of her dress inching its way off her shoulder, looking warm and sultry and a little concerned and-)

She needs to escape.

“Have you forgotten what today is already?”

Melinda remains silent, now digging her fingers between the rows of plants; testing any and all surfaces she can find. There has to be an exit point somewhere. She can't let herself get distracted with this reality, she can't get sucked in-

“Melinda” Bobbi’s voice is sing-song; her beautiful mockingbird singing right into her ear, making her heart ooze and her lungs stutter as she tries to focus. 

She turns around and Bobbi hands her the steaming mug of tea, leaning over to capture her lips in a tight kiss. Melinda doesn’t expect it - time moves differently in this dimension and her eyes can’t keep up, but she manages to fight it at first. 

(She has to get back; she has to get back; she has _to_ -)

Bobbi’s hands weave into her hair, pulling slightly at her roots and Melinda has no final choice but to sink into it, allowing her own fingers to trail their way down Bobbi’s spine; relishing in the soft hum against her lips she receives in response. Melinda remembers this feeling well - the lovely ease between them in their early days. Before Bahrain; before Hunter. Her cheeks ache from the soft, inescapable grin pulling at her lips as she reaches up to kiss Bobbi again. 

“Let’s get going.”

A whisper of memory clings to Melinda’s mind - the sound of ocean waves and laughter and a camera shutter. Where were they going? Had they been here before? She can't remember; cant even hold two thoughts together while Bobbi kisses down her neck again to pry her mug away. She holds out a hand with the promise to lead her to their room.

 _Maybe,_ she thinks, this is Heaven. 

Upstairs, they get ready slowly, taking the time to dress each other; sliding rings onto fingers; slipping straps over shoulders - kissing scars and freckles with a grin pressed against the other’s skin. Melinda leans over the sink to apply her makeup, lips slightly apart as she concentrates on coating each eyelash with mascara.

“Don’t let me forget to grab the camera, I’m sure Tori will want to see all the photos later.”

“Tori? What does she need photos for?”

“The wedding - _Victoria’s_ wedding,” Bobbi looks at her sharply, “you haven’t actually forgotten have you?"  
Melinda pauses, half clothed and unsure, before the memories slot into place before her. Tori and Izzy had gotten married in '05, well before it was formally legal. But that hadn't mattered - it was a beautiful ceremony on a private beach with just them, Phil, Maria and Fury. They had celebrated well into the early morning, until Tori and Izzy finally ran off to their honeymoon suite (despite the height difference Izzy had _insisted_ on carrying Tori to their room bridal style), leaving Maria and Phil passed out on the sand while Fury disappeared into the inky darkness with a grin. Bobbi had taken her hand and slow danced with her until the sun came up; holding her tightly as the tide rolled in. 

God, she had loved that woman. 

Probably still does. Not that it’s possible now, or that she’d ever admit it to Bobbi _or_ herself. 

“Of course I remember.”

“Good,” Bobbi inches forward, pushing her gently against the bathroom sink; all sharp teeth and lacy underwear and rosy red lipstick. 

“Bar-” Melinda lets out a sinful groan, mid-word, as Bobbi lays a string of heated kisses up her neck “-bara.” She shivers as Bobbi scrapes her teeth against her collarbones in response. Melinda knows better than most how much Bobbi hates that name; how she’s the only person whose lips she’ll accept it from. She meets the blonde’s gaze and smiles, brushing her fingertips over an eyelash caught on Bobbi’s cheekbone.

“As much as I want to, we’re going to be late if we do this now.” Melinda presses a final kiss to Bobbi’s lips, before turning the blonde back to face her in the mirror. 

“Like Izzy will even be on time,” Bobbi grumbles, before grabbing the mascara wand from Melinda.

“She’d better be seeing Tori’s been planning this day for the past two years”

“Mm - you’re right,” Bobbi replies with a snort, “if she _was_ late it would take all of us to stop Tori from killing her right there in the isle.” 

They had been close with Izzy and Victoria for years - Melinda and Victoria had even dated in the early nineties.

‘Dating’ was a loose term for what their relationship entailed, with post-mission ‘congrats-on-not-dying’ sex the cornerstone of the whole affair. Civilians too often wanted more than Melinda was willing to give, and there hadn’t been many out, queer women in SHIELD at the time to allow for casual sex. Victoria, a close friend already, was the obvious choice - unwaveringly herself, blunt to a fault, and as (if not more) against office PDA as Melinda. When Izzy came onto the scene, Victoria had been the one to end things - they had never intended their relationship to go the distance, and Melinda was more than happy to end it there. 

Years later when Tori finally got down on one knee, Izzy had snorted and complained about how long it had taken for her to get up the balls to ask. They had then proceeded to make out mid-operation for thirty two minutes. Melinda, to Bobbi’s utter delight, had timed them. 

And now, their big day was finally here. The sense of dèjá vu coils around Melinda's stomach, squeezing tightly. She might pass out.

_Had she been here before?_

No matter.

Slipping on her heels, Melinda follows Bobbi down the stairs to their front door. Phil and Maria wait outside, dressed smartly with grins plastered to their faces. They exchange hugs and pile into the car - Phil climbing behind the wheel while Maria sits shotgun, popping a champagne bottle that materialised from within the depths of her coat. Pouring it into plastic flutes with all the finesse her sniper training affords, she turns to Bobbi and May in the back with a raised eyebrow.

“Drinks, ladies?”

Phil laughs as they drink deeply to the happy couple.

Melinda sits, content, relishing in the warmth of the alcohol and of Bobbi tucked into her side.

This, she thinks, had been a good day. 

_Is_ a good day, she corrects herself.

This is all happening now - so why does it feel like a lifetime ago?

Time swarms around her, and before she has time to think about it, they’re all standing ankle-deep in warm sand - Victoria in an elegant white pantsuit and Izzy in a soft, flowy dress that shimmers within the dusky light. Both are utterly radiant on the best day of their lives.

The agents say their vows, both Fury _and_ Coulson cry, and Bobbi catches Victoria’s bouquet without even trying. They dance, and they drink, and Melinda cannot think of a time she’s ever been happier.

Time shifts again, leaving Melinda on the sand with Bobbi curled around her like a question mark. It’s still dark, hours after the happy couple had left. The booze warms her stomach as the chill of the ocean pinches her cheeks. The sun peeks up from the horizon before them.

"Do you want to get married?”

Melinda takes a deep breath. 

She remembers having this conversation, how she had felt surprised and relieved and scared all at the same time when Bobbi had finally brought it up.

“I don’t know.” 

Bobbi turns her head in the sand to look at Melinda. 

“Why?”

“I-” Even after being here before, even now that she has been married _and_ divorced _and_ dead, Melinda still feels the panic curl in her stomach - tightening up her lungs and clouding her thoughts.

“I don’t know that I deserve that.”

She closes her eyes, listening to the rush of the sea meeting the land; the feel of Bobbi’s skin against her own. The hammering of her pulse against her chest.

Bobbi is quiet for a long moment, before she shuffles in closer; replying in a low voice.

“I’d like to tell you that you’re wrong, but I know you won’t believe me until you see it for yourself. So,” she gently glides her fingers over Melinda’s brow, “I’ll say this: we both have skeletons in our closets. We’ve both made mistakes and decisions that we’re not proud of. But Melinda, you are everything I have ever needed. Ever wanted.” She waits for another beat, before entwining their fingers together.

“You deserve to be happy Melinda.”

She’s crying silently - tears streaming down her cheeks at Bobbi’s words.

"I'm happy when I'm with you."

"I'm not going anywhere."

The tide rolls in as they lay there; together.

Six months later, Bobbi asks again - directly this time - and Melinda says yes. They’re married the following Tuesday; eloping in a derelict town hall in Mexico City. Phil, Izzy and Tori were the only ones invited - much to the eternal disdain of one Lian May - a fact that Melinda has never been able to live down, and for which Bobbi was exonerated from immediately.

Bobbi is a vision in trailing white lace - hair pinned back with a wreath of tiny white flowers encircling the crown of her head. Melinda feels her heart thudder at the sight. 

Bobbi smiles and takes her hand; thumbs away the loose tears from her cheek.  
“You look beautiful.” She whispers.

Bobbi grins, but her words come out as muffled, incomprehensible sounds.The edges of Melinda’s vision go black, and Bobbi gets further and further away. Nausea overtakes her as the world shifts again, knocking the breath from her lungs. She loses sight of Bobbi; calls for her. No response. 

She knew this wouldn’t last. Wiping tears from her cheeks, she utters a final curse at her own inability to let go - she never did learn what was best for her. The world folds in on itself before her eyes; a kaleidoscope of light and sound until finally her vision cuts - and the darkness rushes in. Her final thoughts are for her team; her wife. 

_This is it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! 
> 
> There will be more chapters to come as I finish editing this story. Please let me know what you think - words, paragraphs, keyboard smashes, emojis are all welcome and encouraged - so please leave a comment/kudos!! I will love you forever if you do. 
> 
> I have been writing this since Femslash Feb 2018 - yes I am terrible with deadlines - but truly I love these two idiots with all of my heart.
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, and all mistakes are my own. Title comes from Hozier's song 'In a Week' - a song about death and pain and being buried in a forest beside the love of your mortal life (goals honestly). Would recommend a listen. 
> 
> I have been so inspired by the other Bobbi/May fics - please take the time to go dive into all the other works under this tag if you haven't already!!
> 
> Thanks again!  
> M


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melinda blinks, and she’s standing in the belly of the Triskelion. Bobbi sits draped across the chair in front of hers dressed in civvies, her feet brazenly up on the desk as she looks down at her phone.
> 
> “Still with me Mel?”
> 
> She sighs. Nods once.
> 
> Apparently this nightmare was not yet over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Thank you for your wonderful feedback on chapter 1 - literally warmed me to the bones. I hope you're all doing alright at the moment in the current COVID-19 world. South Australia (my home) just has the one case right now thank goodness, but I can only imagine how bad it still is in so many other countries. My thoughts are with you all. 
> 
> This chapter gets a bit dark so strap in. We address Bahrain and the divorce in part - I've added two more tags so check them out. 
> 
> Let me know what you all think :)

Melinda blinks, and she’s standing in the belly of the Triskelion. Bobbi sits draped across the chair in front of hers dressed in civvies, her feet brazenly up on the desk as she looks down at her phone. Melinda’s office is exactly as she left it - papers stacked into neat piles at each corner of her desk, staplers on the left, the red DENIED stamp on her right. She’d somehow forgotten how dark it was down here; how bare the walls were. How the cubicles beside her own had remained chronically vacant due to the office-wide fear she’d invoked - the quiet, icy woman with a higher clearance than anyone working in the basement ought to have.

She knew what they thought of her, but she could never rally the energy to care.

The walls of her cubicle comfort her somewhat, but nothing like they used to - not since home came to mean the smell of Phil’s cooking, Jemma’s hand-written post-its, Daisy’s laughter echoing down the corridor-

(and Bobbi, she thinks, humming in the kitchen of their apartment, warm and bright and _home_ ).

She looks back at the piles of work - expense approval requests that she’s never going to sign, and mission reports requiring more clean-up than they were worth. The pointy end of an appointment card poking out from between two folders; her weekly mandated psych appointment, the very best SHIELD had to offer to get _The Cavalry_ back on active duty.

“Still with me Mel?”

She sighs. Nods once.

Apparently this nightmare was not yet over.

“I thought we could go away together- somewhere tropical? Get you a frilly cocktail and work on our tans?” Bobbi raises her eyebrows suggestively at that.

Melinda scoffs indignantly - she does not like frilly cocktails.

“So? Hawaii? The Bahamas?” Bobbi spins the chair around, holding her phone up for Melinda to see the idyllic beach-front photo on her screen.

“Anywhere but Tahiti right?” She says with a laugh that hits Melinda right in the gut.

Something’s wrong - like the memory has split into different shades of black and grey that don’t quite align anymore; a fractured bone no longer quite sitting as it should. A bell rings softly in the back of her head, the familiarity of memory shrouded in a sickly unease.

Unperturbed by her silence, Bobbi continues on.

“We both need a break after the shit-show that went down in Paris last month.”

Melinda scoffs, concern forgotten. _Understatement of the century._

Bobbi had been shot, Clint kidnapped, and she’d been left to work for three and a half days without sleep to get him back from the Russians. She tries not to think of the days she'd spent at Bobbi’s bedside in the weeks after, waiting to see if she would wake up again.

“What a fucking nightmare.” Bobbi huffs loudly, returning to her phone with a frown.

In the end, the bullet had missed Bobbi’s heart by eight centimeters, lodging firmly in her shoulder. The wound had been excruciatingly painful for upwards of a year, meaning that despite her best efforts, Bobbi hadn't been cleared for active duty. Rendered unable to excercise in fear of injuring it again, unable drink due to the meds - hell, she could barely wash her own hair.

Bobbi couldn't even reach out and hold her wife when she needed it most.

Instead, Melinda had spent every night for three months in the training room with Bobbi, watching with tight shoulders and a soft frown as Bobbi tried over and over again to pass the fitness test.

Every day, Bobbi would come to her with torn knuckles and sweat dripping down her forehead, asking Melinda to train her.  
Every day, Melinda would shake her head; a dull sadness in heavily bagged eyes.

“ _I can’t_.”

(After all, Bobbi’s injury was not the only reason Melinda couldn’t be held).

Melinda hadn’t told anyone what had gone down in Bahrain.

Not Bobbi, not Phil, not any of the SHIELD psych teams they had sent her way. They knew she was hurting, but Melinda gave away nothing. But with Bobbi in pain of her own, this could only go on for so long. Neither woman had slept in months; between Bahrain and Bobbi’s injury they had been walking a paper-thin line between okay and most definitely _not_.

Seemingly, they had been tip-toeing around their issues for long enough, when Bobbi failed the test for the fifth time that month. Fueled by the ice in her veins, she threw her towel onto the mat and stormed over to Melinda. Impassive as ever, her wife looked at her from where she was sitting cross-legged on the mats.

“I need you to train me Melinda. You set this goddamned test during your stint at the Academy, if you train me for it, I can pass.”

“I can’t train you Bobbi."

“One sparring session, please Mel, no one else can fight like you do.”

“ _No_ Bobbi.” Melinda stood, preparing to leave, before Bobbi’s hand darted out to grab her own.

Melinda, startled and raw inside in all the wrong ways, yanked her arm back, pupils wide, breath heaving.

“ _Don’t touch me."_

And that’s what sent Bobbi over the edge.

Bobbi yelled for a long time - at Melinda for refusing to acknowledge Bahrain; for running when Bobbi had pushed her to get help. For sitting back and watching her struggle for months with this injury without training her - SHIELD’s top specialist, unwilling to help her wife to get her life back.

And Melinda? She took Bobbi’s words with a blank face and a straight spine. _The Calvary_ , true to her name, taking each hit as it came without so much as a flinch.

And, when Bobbi was finally done - wide-eyed and shaking, with sweat beading on her forehead and flyaway strands of hair framing her face - Melinda walked away. Again.

She turned from Bobbi calmly and returned to her cubicle ( _her prison; her preservation_ ) - sitting down at her desk to work the next ten hours without pause.

(She refused to be disappointed when Bobbi didn’t follow her out.)

When she had finished her own work, she went through her colleague's waiting reports - hauling piles of folders back and forth through the empty office until there were no more papers to file. No more words to write to distract her from her crumbling marriage. Sometime amid the early morning darkness, she finally left - driving to the seedy bar down the road - drinking, drinking, _drunk_ in a dark corner until she couldn’t see straight. Stumbling out the back, she’d thrown up thin trails of yellow-green bile into the gutter, tears rolling down her cheeks. All she needed was one night’s sleep without seeing that girl’s dead body in her arms. All she wanted was to be able to love Bobbi the way she used to; without the aching hatred of the person she had become. To touch her without seeing the blood-stained fingerprints she left behind.

Phil arrived twenty minutes later and held her hair back while she heaved - she knew Bobbi had called him but couldn’t bring herself to be mad at him for coming. They sat there for a long time in silence, Melinda working to get control of her breathing while Phil wrapped his coat around her. They had as much to figure out as she and Bobbi did, but that was for another time. Thankfully, it seemed that Phil was willing to wait.

Refusing to go back to the apartment, Phil had taken her back to his place. She’d collapsed on the sofa without another word; sleeping until 1pm the following day. Despite the pounding headache and acid lurking at the back of her throat, she felt more herself that morning than she had in weeks. Phil had already left for work when she got up, but left money for the cab home and some aspirin on the bench. Next to her keys, she found a note he’d left with a string of numbers scrawled messily across it.

Mel -

I know you love her, and I know you’re just trying to protect her. But the only way this will work is if you figure it out together.

The number for the Shield psych team is below - call them. 

I’ll see you soon, partner.

Phil

Things got a bit better from there.

Bobbi greeted her at the door of their apartment two hours later, dressed in pyjamas with puffy eyes and smudged mascara. Melinda knew she didn’t look any better.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking at her hands, “I haven’t been the partner you needed. I haven’t been the woman you married, I-I honestly don’t even know if she’s still here. But I should have tried harder to make this work. I’m sorry Bobbi.”

There was a long pause, before Bobbi reached out, tilting Melinda’s chin up to meet her eyes.

“Me too” she finally replied, with a soft nod of her head, beckoning Melinda in.

At the kitchen table, Bobbi talked for a long time - explaining the frustration she had felt every day, watching Melinda slip away from her without a fight. How managing her injury alone had led her down a path of all-encompassing frustration, where she found herself unable to help herself or her wife. She apologised for yelling, and for touching Melinda’s arm without asking first. Melinda nodded along, feeling the knot crushing her windpipe soften slightly.

 _Okay_ , she thought, _this might still be okay_.

“I know this hasn’t been easy Mel -” Bobbi reached for her hand, pausing right before they touched, hovering in stasis while she talked - “but we can’t keep going like this. I’m not asking you to go back into the field when I know you need time away. I don't care if you never go back, that choice is up to you. What I _am_ asking that you talk to me, good days and bad, so that I know where you’re at. It won’t work otherwise.”

Melinda took a breath, and slowly ( _inch_ _by_ _precious inch_ ) reached out to entwine her fingers with Bobbi’s on the table. For a single moment, they sit and breathe together.

_Inhale_

“I’ll fight.”

_Exhale_

“Ok then”

And for a moment, that was enough.

And so, weeks later, seeing Bobbi’s quiet excitement for this trip, Melinda forces her discomfort to the side. Together, Phil had said. They had to fix this together.

“A holiday would be nice.”

Bobbi glances up, openly surprised at her answer - or perhaps, just the fact that she answered at all.

“Perfect,” Bobbi recovers her stride with an easy grin; getting up gracefully from the chair.

"I’ll book us a ride and take next weekend off. You’ll do the same?”

“Of course,” she replies.

And just like that, she’s alone in the office again.

Melinda feels her happiness slip away - they never did make it to that island retreat. Not with the Battle of New York looming overhead. Not even afterwards, when there were far too many fires to put out for either of them to take time off. When they did finally meet up again after it all, in an old diner on Fifth Avenue, they found that all that was left was rubble. Phil was dead, Bobbi was being transferred to Gonzales’ ship, and Melinda had neither the words nor the energy to glue the fragments of their relationship back together.

_So much for fighting._

Somewhere far away, she feels her body becoming lifeless as her lungs stop gasping and her heart stops beating. She screws her eyes shut, thinking of Mack’s steady hand on her shoulder, Elena’s fierce grin, and Fitz’s cardigans left in all the wrong places.

Of Robin’s tiny arms encircling her waist, calling her _mom_.

She thinks about her other family - about Nat and Clint and Maria - and what she wouldn’t give to see them again. She thinks about Andrew and Victoria and Izzy and _Katya_ \- all the losses they had endured; all the lives she would have sacrificed everything she had to save.

As the darkness finally closes in, she thinks about the last time she’d seen Bobbi - how they had kissed one last time in that dimly lit bar; short and sad and sweet - just long enough to count for something but by no means long enough to say everything she needed to.

She squeezes her eyes tighter; hoping against hope that this would all be over soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, all feedback is so welcomed and encouraged. Kudos, keyboard smashes, emojis and comments all fill me with love - please let me know what you think!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melinda opens her eyes and groans.
> 
> She’s still alive.
> 
> Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Again, thank you for the lovely comments/kudos on chapters 1&2\. I am so thankful for your wonderful support - this story means a lot to me so it's so nice to see other people enjoying it too. Again, I've updated the tags so please check them out before reading.  
> Much love -  
> M

Melinda opens her eyes and groans.

She’s still alive.

_Fuck._

She’s standing in the dark out front of an old martial arts studio. _Her_ studio. 

For six months in ‘98, Fury had her running the Brooklyn gym - teaching self-defence and tai chi to kids in the rougher neighbourhoods surrounding it. She’d revelled at their progress - these kids who had fought tooth and nail to reach every junction in their lives playing together, learning strength and compassion and self-control. 

From nine till five, Melinda taught classes, ran the gym, worked reception, balanced the books and cleaned the mats until they shone. She’d found herself strangely engrossed in the mission; in the kids, the everyday work. She had never seen herself being fulfilled outside of Shield, but this life of quiet contentment caught her off guard.

But she could never forget the mission for too long - not with her gym becoming the stomping grounds for human traffickers every Friday and Saturday night. A particularly virulent bunch, they brought gifteds together from all over the country and pitted them against each other for sport - forcing them to fight with the promise of freedom rarely granted. She seethed at the sight of them, looming figures dressed in crisp suits and cocktail dresses descending on her studio like it was theirs to wreck. They left cigarettes burning on the mats; bottles of alcohol smuggled away in all manner of storage locations. Blood splatter in the grout that wouldn’t be removed no matter _how_ much scrubbing Melinda did the next day. 

Most of those who entered the ring were adults who had lived with their powers for years - controlled and deadly, they would fight for a time, until the moment came where they could slip back into the night away from their captors. Melinda helped where she could, distracting the crew, leaving car keys, passports and get-away funds in convenient locations for the gifteds to get out. There would be a Shield team waiting on the other side of freedom, of course, but Fury’s brand of imprisonment was better than the hell those people had been in.

(It had to be.

There was no alternative.)

But the worst thing, of course, was the children. 

Uncontrolled power in a small, terrified body never boded well.

They brought in a sixteen year old boy with fire that scaled up his arms - fought him against a thirteen year old girl with telekinetic powers. Later came a four year old with poison that seeped from his teeth; an infant who could shape shift into a tiger at will.

They were the reason she was there. 

Their raw, untapped potential was an alluring find to all manner of power-hungry adults, who kept the children under lock and key in a facility close by. 

The minute she found out where, she would burn that place to the ground.

The mission almost failed when Bobbi was thrown into the mix six weeks in - posing as a cutthroat investor making the most of the _unique_ business opportunity Melinda was hosting. In typical Fury style, neither agent had known that the other was with SHIELD - leaving them in the dark to scheme against the other in an effort to bring the fight club to its knees. 

For weeks Bobbi strut around in red heels, glasses and a suit jacket, barking commands at anyone who would listen. Bobbi had more pull over the trafficking team than Melinda did, but she saw the suspicion they eyed her with - her tenacity, outrage and swinging hips keeping them entirely distracted before each match, allowing Melinda to go about her snooping unseen. 

Desperately, she wished to hate the woman.

Instead, she was mesmerised.

Three weeks after she arrived, Bobbi broke her heel on the front step, stumbled, and yelled out for help. The ringleader of the team, a short, portly man went to assist, allowing Bobbi to lean against his shoulder whilst she stepped out of the broken shoe. So distracted by Bobbi’s cleavage, he failed to notice the storeroom key disappearing from his back pocket. Melinda frowned from afar. She’d raided that room weeks back, reading as many files as she could before she was needed back in the main gym. None of the files held any information on where the children were being kept, so she hadn’t bothered going back for a more thorough look. Maybe she had missed something.

Hours later, Melinda waited in a shadowed alcove for Bobbi to surface at the storeroom door. She’d almost given up after three hours of nothing, when she heard a soft _thud_ from inside the room. Swinging the door open, she’d caught Bobbi rifling through the files; an open window behind her. Both women drew their guns immediately. 

“Those aren’t your files.”

“Oops,” Bobbi threw a file back in the cabinet haphazardly, “I must have gotten lost.”

Melinda snorted, her trigger finger itching to engage.

“You have three seconds. Why are you here?”

Bobbi grinned, setting Melinda’s teeth alight.

“I’m pulling out the thread from your organisation.”

 _Sure,_ she thought, _as if that’s easy to do._

“Tell me what you’re really here for.”

Bobbi reached an arm out, voice softening, snarl disappearing.

“I’m just looking out for the children -” 

_The_ _Mockingbird_ , singing the tune her enemy wanted to hear.

But Melinda wasn’t listening.

“No. Either you tell me who you’re working for or you get a bullet to the head.”

Bobbi’s soft features loosened back into a grin as she snorted.  
“Bit much don’t you think?”

Melinda’s head tilted to the right, thinking. 

“I guess I could just tie you up and force it out of you.”

Bobbi’s jaw slackened at that. Melinda smirked, raising an eyebrow.

“Cat got your tongue?”

Bobbi licked her lips.

“Against work policy I’m afraid - can’t get kinky with the enemy on company time.”

“Such a shame,” Melinda frowned, “oh well. Violence it is.”

  
Melinda launched into action and struck first, aiming a well-timed blow to Bobbi’s plexus with the butt of her gun. In response, Bobbi twisted her arm backwards, forcing her to drop the weapon. They fought back and forth noiselessly, neither wanting to forfeit the upper hand or to make a move that would bring undue attention to themselves. Minutes went by without either progressing, when movement outside the door had caught them both in their tracks. A small boy, maybe five or six years old, stood on the threshold in ratty pyjamas. As one, they lunged for the open door, but it was too late. Wide eyed and silent, he watched them for a brief moment before reaching out to point at each agent in turn. He connected the points with a line between them.

“Shield.”

Both women exhaled. Looked at each other. Looked back to the child.

“What -” Bobbi began, but was cut off from the gym’s security system going off.

The sound of heavy footsteps thundered down the hall, stopping just short of running the boy over. In moments, he was scooped up in the arms of the security team - the ringleader swearing at the boy, shaking him. He looked back at them with big eyes that ate at Melinda’s insides. She pledged at that moment to do anything and everything it took to free that boy. 

(It only occurred to Melinda after they’d left that none of the trafficking team had paid her _or_ Bobbi any notice in their store room.)

One of the guards had, however, hung behind - arm against the doorframe, leaning towards Bobbi. 

“That’s the new kid - mind reader apparently.”

He winked at Bobbi, his greasy mustache twitching as he spoke.

“Dunno why he’d try to escape knowing we were gon’ catch him though!”

He laughed with his full belly. Melinda wanted to slap him.

Bobbi, to her credit, ignored him entirely, instead electing to straighten her clothing and return to the filing cabinet as if she was actually meant to be there.

“You’d better go back. You’re no use to this company if you can’t even watch the children.”

He visibly deflated, ego shrinking like a grape in the sun, before shuffling out.

Melinda waited until the man’s footsteps thudded away before approaching Bobbi again. 

“You’re Shield?” Melinda’s words were so soft, Bobbi almost missed them over the blood rushing through her ears.

“Agent Bobbi Morse, Fury sent me. He didn’t mention a partner.”

“He never does,” Melinda rolled her eyes, “this was _my_ mission, did he not think I could finish it?”

“Maybe,” Bobbi tilted her head slightly, “or maybe he thought it would be better with two.”

“We’ll see.” She considered Bobbi again, the woman who had been specifically placed to make a scene so that Melinda could remain invisible. She wished she could get angry, but all she felt was relief. And hope.

“Tell me what you know.”

“Depends if you’re still wanting to tie me up.”

Melinda’s lips quirked at the sides, her professionalism and libido fighting for attention.

“They’ll be gone by 3am - come by my office then and we can talk.”

Bobbi’s eyebrow cocked, but she nodded against herself.

“Yes _Ma’am.”_

Weeks dragged on as they worked independently to gain the leaders’ trust - painstakingly collecting crumbs of information, avoiding each other in public at all costs, and then meeting back in Melinda’s tiny office in the early hours of the morning to compare their findings. Their relationship had settled from outright flirting into a soft companionship - platonic but oh so _warm_ , verging on the precipice of a deep fire below. 

There were days when Bobbi had seen so much pain in the gifteds’ eyes that she couldn’t solve, that she couldn’t fix with her smarts or her strength or her _hands_ , that she felt herself shut down at the horror of it all. On those nights Melinda would wrap her in her own coat (always too short; too tight in the arms; but oh the _warmth_ -), bundle her into the car and take them both back to her small apartment. Melinda would make tea, hand her clean pyjamas, still warm from the dryer, and take her to bed; holding her while running fingers softly through her hair.

Platonic or not, when Bobbi looked at Melinda she saw nothing short of _home_. 

And home, here, was a liability.

Three weeks passed since the last time she’d let herself go home with Melinda. Bobbi had arrived first at their weekly meeting, knocking quietly on her door before letting herself in. Ten minutes went by, finding Bobbi pacing restlessly up and down the room. She checked her watch. Another five minutes passed. Bobbi paced some more. Melinda had never been late before. Perhaps she was busy. Perhaps she was chasing down a lead. 

Perhaps she was dead in a gutter somewhere.

(Bobbi tried her hardest not to think about that possibility.)

By the time Melinda arrived, Bobbi was on the verge of tearing the place down to look for her.

“Where have you _been_?”

Melinda’s eyes reflected the moonlight like coins in the dark room. She looked _different_ \- exhaustion ingrained into her shoulders, bags under her eyes, one pale hand clutching the doorknob, the other running through her messy hair.

“They _know_ Bobbi.” She closed the door, cloaked in shadow. “We have to go - if we don’t do it tonight they’ll come after us tomorrow and we won’t get another chance.”

"But-"

"You need to trust me on this. We need to move _now_."

“Slow down May, we don’t even know where the kids are.”

Melinda’s face morphed into a wild, ugly grin. She held up a blood stained strip of paper with an address scrawled across it in black texta.

“I have the address.”

“How did you get your hands on that?”

Melinda thought back to earlier that night, watching a boy being whipped for not winning against another fighter. How something had snapped within her. How she had slunk up behind the boy’s abuser and choked him with her own shoelace until he told her the address. How she had stuffed his unconscious form into a supply cupboard after and deadlocked the door in her wake. How the kid who she’d just saved ran back to the others to tell them what she had done - so unused to any form of kindness he only knew his abusers agenda.

It broke her heart to witness, but she knew she had to get out of there.

“Tried violence - seemed to work - but they know I’m dirty. We have to go _now_ Bobbi.” 

Bobbi followed May down the hall, jaw agape at Melinda's actions. This was it. They would save the gifteds, and then they were going home.

Melinda’s mind swirls back to the present. She’s still out front of her gym, looking back at the faded exterior as Bobbi piles into the car beside her - the flag on the lawn waiving a final goodbye to them in the frigid wind. For six months this place was everything that they had. She’d held Bobbi’s hand in that small office, had laughed with her students on the mats as they learnt self defence, had cried softly in the shadows at the injustice of it all. It wasn’t ever easy to walk away from a job like this.

But, she knows, all things have to end. 

She gets behind the wheel - driving well into the night to reach the address. Bobbi calls it in at some point, letting Fury know they’re going in, but Melinda barely notices.

Finally, they arrive at a warehouse that, by all accounts looked abandoned. Typical. They park around the corner and suit up, strapping each other into bullet proof vests while shoving energy bars and water bottles into their packs for the kids.

This was the night they brought it all down.

Bobbi’s eyes glimmer dangerously in the flickering street lights.

“Let’s do this.”

Together they sneak into the building - full of adrenaline and sharp-toothed grins; armed with a casual confidence that came from a lifetime of risky extractions. They dodge guards and strike them down with a well oiled precision, slipping noiselessly under trip-wires and around camera feeds. Finally in the clear, they reach the basement entrance. Bobbi kicks in the door and Melinda slips down the hallway, clearing each room of potential threats. The first door is alarmingly empty; as is the second. They’d had months to plan out every detail of this extraction perfectly - they’d known what kind of building they’d be infiltrating, how many guards there would be, how many gifteds there would be for a long time. All they’d been waiting on was the exact address. They hadn’t counted on the possibility that they’d be moved.

"What now?" Bobbi whispers.

“They have to be close. Let’s keep looking.”

And they do - hours spent looking in every corner, tapping on every wall; every floorboard checking for hidden rooms the children might be kept in.

But no luck.

"May -" Bobby's voice breaks, just as she remembers it did back then - "we have to find them.”

Melinda grabs her hand; thumb running over her knuckles.  
“I know. We will.”

So they keep looking. The sun comes up, goes down again - still they look. 

They expand the search to nearby offices, football fields, gymnasiums. Nothing.

Another six hours pass, and they find an abandoned storage facility three blocks away. It’s decrepit, with high lawns and faded signs. A take-away coffee cup sits forgotten on the roof of a car in the driveway, still warm to the touch. She nods to Melinda - this was it.

They descend on the building with the force of a strike team, and all the stealth their specialist training had to offer, dispatching anyone who stands in their way. When the guards have been dealt with they start their search. One by one they slide the storage units open, looking for the gifteds - empty, empty, _full_ of scared faces looking back at them. Together, they help them up, give them food, water, blankets from their packs. Melinda murmurs soft mandarin to a small child shivering in the back corner. Bobbi helps the adults gather their families, their few possessions together to get them out of the dark, dank unit for once and for all. As one, they shuffle out of the building - Melinda leading the way, Bobbi bringing up the rear - these people who were locked up, punished, and abused for their powers, walking into the sunshine with their heads held high. 

Shield vans line the street, agents of all levels ushering gifteds into cars, arresting the ringleaders of the operation and comforting distraught families. 

Bobbi looks at May with a soft smile; takes her hand. 

“We did it.”

Melinda feels something warm and heavy settle in her stomach. She looks up towards the sun. 

“Let me take you home.”

And she almost goes with Bobbi - content and proud and exhausted all at the same time. 

That is, before Melinda spots Phil waving her over from one of the cars. They walk over to greet him.

“May! Boy is it good to see you.” He grins, cheek to cheek as she embraces her old friend.

“There’s a gifted in the car, a young boy, he’s asking for you both.”

Bobbi and May peer into the car - the young mind-reading boy sits quietly inside.

She’s ready for " _thank you"_. For an angry " _why did you let them hurt me,”_ or " _where do I go from here?”_ But that’s not what he has to say.

He looks Melinda dead in the eye. Reaches out a hand.

“I need a new mother.” 

That, she was not expecting.

“I- don’t understand, but we can get you back to your mother - where does she live?”

Melinda tears her gaze away to hail down one of the other agents, but everyone else on the street has gone. All the agents have disappeared; empty Shield cars remaining scattered like abandoned toys along the street. Stunned, she looks back to the boy, and finds a young girl in his stead. Long hair, brown eyes piercing into some dark crevice of Melinda’s mind -

“You killed mother. And now there is _so much_ _pain._ ”

She lurches back, reeling. 

_“Take my hand.”_

Katya.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katya is here. 
> 
> Katya is here, in Brooklyn 1998 -
> 
> Here standing in the warmth of the sun next to Bobbi on their first mission- 
> 
> How, how, how is this possible. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tw: Panic Attack, PTSD, alluding to suicidal thoughts

Katya is here. 

Katya is here, in Brooklyn 1998 -

Here standing in the warmth of the sun next to _Bobbi_ on their first mission- 

_How, how, how is this possible._

She can’t be here.

Bobbi can’t see her like this, she needs to go, she’s been compro _mised_ \- 

Bobbi’s face is full of alarm, speaking to her, but all Melinda can hear is the boots of her agents on the concrete floor as she feels the Bahrani dust curl up in her lungs. She’s choking on the smell of sulfur and blood and gunpowder and suddenly she’s not sure she’ll be able to survive long enough for her next breath to eclipse the current.

She’s spiralling, panic akin to that in the early days after Bahrain. 

She staggers backwards, finding the curb with the backs of her feet before landing heavily on the grass behind her. Her lungs are heaving but she’s not breathing.

She’s been so swept up in reliving this mission that she forgot she was dying somewhere else.

Melinda is so far outside of herself that she barely registers Bobbi’s concerned face appearing before her - hands pressed flush against her cheeks. Bobbi kisses her nose, her lips, her forehead softly. She’s speaking, but Melinda can’t hear and her hands are so _cold_ and they’re not moving when she tells them to and she’s not sure her lungs are still working because her chest feels far too _tight_ for each breath to squeeze in and out of. Her vision prickles black around the edges. 

She wonders if these are her last moments. 

_Synapses slowing, neurons dying._

She wonders if she’s already in hell, finally answering to the sins she has committed.

“I killed her.”

It takes Melinda a minute to process the words; longer still to realise that she spoke them.

“You didn’t have a choice Melinda.” 

“I killed her.”

Bobbi pushes her hands up Melinda’s sleeves, palms warm points of contact, fingers spiralling around her bones to anchor her in place. She rests her forehead against Melinda’s as she shivers in the morning light. 

“She’s dead. I killed her.”

“I know Mel. I know.”

“She’s dead.”

“Breathe with me Melinda.” 

And she does, _in_ and _out_ and _in_ and _out_ over again until she feels the slightest feeling return in the tips of her fingers, the slightest ease in pressure against the corners of her mind. 

It takes time, but slowly Melinda comes back to her body. 

She wiggles her fingers. Stretches her toes.Takes a breath and opens her eyes. 

Her body groans. 

_Alive,_ it screams.

She turns to face Bobbi, watching mutely as her ex-wife becomes increasingly panicked - the erratic movements, the chain-cursing under her breath.

“Shit.”

Bobbi looks around, searching for something. Some _one_. She’s got that same panicked look about her as she did on the Bus - back when she was hiding weapons and hoarding secrets, muttering _I didn’t want this_ before blowing out the lights and Melinda’s trust along with it.

“Fucking- _fuck_.”

Melinda wants to swear along with her.

Bobbi turns back to face her, not meeting her eyes. Instead, she looks at Melinda’s hands - runs a finger over the crescent moons embedded into each of her palms from her nails digging deep. 

She frowns. Runs a hand through her hair.

_“Fucking hell-”_

Bobbi stops mid-curse when she sees Melinda blinking back at her.

“God Melinda-” she holds Melinda’s cheek gently. A single tear slips from the crease of her eye.

“I didn’t know you’d have to deal with this when they brought you back. I’ve been trying so hard not to let it get to you but -” 

She stops. Closes her mouth. Opens it again to speak before gritting her teeth firmly shut.

“What-”

“No, never mind. It’s all okay. Let’s get you up.”

“But-”

Bobbi looks at her with such tenderness she can barely stand it. 

She brushes a piece of hair out of Melinda’s face.

“You’re _safe_ Melinda. That’s the most important thing. Let’s get you home.”

Shield agents are milling all over the place - Phil’s standing by the car like nothing had happened. The telepathic boy sits calmly in the car where Katya had sat.

“It’s all in your head.” He says.

Bobbi hurries her away.

She’s fairly sure she was on the edge of figuring this all out before Katya’s appearance. 

But now -

Now, her thoughts are spread like single atoms across continents - she can’t string two of them together without losing her grip on the present. 

“Bobbi - Bobbi where are we going?” 

Melinda’s voice cracks in all the wrong places. It feels like years since she’s spoken.

“Shh Mel I’ve got you.”

“No, tell me where-”

“I need you to stay strong Mel.”

She’s pushed into Phil’s arms without another moment to think. His hand guides her back while he chats on cheerily - something about Captain America. A trip to Thor’s hammer. A history lesson he’s taking next week on the Cambridge Incident. Daisy’s blooming relationship with Sousa. _Daniel_ Sousa?

He’s all out of order and she can barely keep up, her legs moving without her consent. All the while, Bobbi slips silently away from her side.

So overwhelmed by Katya’s presence in 1998, she almost misses her environment fading out around her - a gradual transition from suburban sunlight to the fluorescent hallways of The Hub. Phil’s still walking beside her, suited up and smiling, full of post-TAHITI vigour. Behind her, Fitz and Simmons cling to each other with wide eyes and unadulterated joy; muttering about new technology and showing off their Night Night guns and _oh Fitz isn’t it so good to be back! Everything has changed so much since we left!_

Melinda frowns, thinking about the time they’d spent together since those days on the Bus.

The years spent at the Lighthouse, the Playground.

Bobbi wasn't in her life at this point, and she barely knew her team - Fitzsimmons were still scared of her for God's sake. Even Phil was different back in the early days of TAHITI to the man she came to know.

 _Shit_ , she thinks, _right back to the start._

Not for the first time, Melinda wishes she had the answers she so desperately needed to make sense of everything that was happening.

Was she dead or alive? It should be a simple question. 

She turns back to Fitzsimmons. It surprises her to realise how readily she’d brought them into the field - _children_ , turned scientists, turned field agents overnight. Melinda’s mother had brought her up for this life, there was never another option for her. But those kids had futures and skills and promise outside of Shield that Melinda never could quite reach. 

She wonders if they resent her for taking that away.

She turns to the right, seeing Daisy ( _Skye_ , as she was then) trailing behind - mouth agape at the grandeur, snapping photos of the building as they walk through. Melinda will have to confiscate her phone before those photos end up across the internet or with the Rising Tide. She feels an ugly sense of distrust when she looks at Skye - so juxtaposed against the overwhelming love she feels for Daisy. 

Melinda shuts her eyes and thinks back to her last moments - Daisy leaning over her dying body, combing fingers through her hair, tears streaming down her cheeks. 

_Her girl._ She’s come so far. 

(She’ll be fine without her. They all will.)

Ward walks to her left, and she almost growls at the sight. He catches her watching - shoots her a smirk and a raised eyebrow. _God,_ she could kill him with her bare hands. 

And suddenly - they’ve stopped. 

Coulson and Hand are discussing the new mission with an impressive level of professionalism for two people who had regularly gotten drunk in karaoke bars during their Academy days - singing Every _Rose Has its Thorn_ on repeat after every break-up _._ Melinda wonders if she still has video proof somewhere, Daisy would have gotten such a kick out of that. 

When Tori sees her, Melinda nods with a respectful _“Agent Hand,”_ as if she herself hadn’t loved Tori. Celebrated with her, drunk with her, cried with her, grieved with her. 

( _For_ her.)

As if Tori hadn’t stayed in the med bay with Melinda in the days after Bahrain, watching her until she was discharged. Melinda had refused contact with her friends, her family - her wife. Only through Tori’s position at the Hub did she sneak in after hours when Melinda was asleep, keeping her company through the nightmares.

She never did thank her for that.

Wait - grieving _for_ Tori? 

Yes. 

Yes, that’s right, Tori is dead. Ward killed her. 

Melinda went to her funeral. 

Izzy is dead too. 

Like Andrew, and Trip, and Lincoln, and Phil.

She feels a sharp, familiar pang of grief to the center of her chest. It aches and burns with every breath, becoming harder and harder to breathe under such a weighty loss.

She welcomes it.

It reminds her where she herself is headed.

“Agent May. I heard you were returning.”

Melinda meets Victoria’s eyes - cold, unfeeling. _Dead_.

“I’m just the pilot.”

Victoria scoffs. 

“Mm we’ll see how long that lasts won’t we?"

She knows Tori is just trying to get a rise out of her, but she refuses to engage, remaining silent. Tori’s eyes soften slightly, and she tilts her head slightly in question.

“Does she know?”

Melinda can sense the eyes of her team boring into the back of her skull. 

Phil’s pretending not to be listening but she knows better.

“We haven’t spoken.” Kurt. To the point. 

Tori frowns. Then steps forwards, speaking too quietly for the team to hear.

“Melinda, she deserves to know.”

She eyes off Tori - staring her down. 

Tori stares back, unflinching, until, finally, Melinda lowers her gaze. She has nothing to win here.

“I’ll talk to her.”

Tori takes a breath.

“Good, I’m sure she’ll be happy to hear from you.”

Satisfied, Tori glances at Phil, before leading the way to the conference room. 

Ward pushes past her to follow Hand, still smirking, and she wonders how much he knows. Had Garrett briefed him on their weaknesses? The people they would sacrifice everything for? 

She thinks of what he had done to Bobbi, the physical torture, the psychological abuse. The bullet he rigged to kill whoever came to save her - the bullet that had ended up in Bobbi’s chest anyway. She shudders at the memory of Bobbi bleeding out in Hunter’s arms. How she’d stopped breathing on the plane ride back - Melinda pushing oxygen into her lungs with the bag and mask, praying her chest would keep moving until they could get her to Simmons. 

But now, Melinda’s dying. 

And Bobbi, likely still alive, is somewhere out there on the run from the Russian government. 

Oh how time changes one’s perspective on these things.

Time swirls and the meeting’s over. Tori, in all her infinite wisdom, is sending Fitz into the Field with Ward. And around here, what Tori wants, she gets. 

Melinda’s fuming as she walks back through the Hub with Phil. 

And then? She sees Bobbi.

Bobbi’s standing by the exit, leaning against the wall while she talks with one of the security guards. She looks _good_ \- leather jacket slung over her arm, dressed in a ribbed blue sweater, tight black jeans and combat boots. And - _of course -_ Bobbi spots her immediately. No time to run for the hills. No choice but to face the music. She approaches Bobbi, Phil hesitantly trailing behind.

“Agent Morse.” She greets her ex-wife with civil politeness.

Bobbi considers her for a moment. Leans to the left to eye off of her team loitering on the other side of the building. Slides her gaze back to meet Melinda’s - eyebrow cocked, ready to fire.

Melinda steps back down from her high horse. _Okay._

“Bobbi,” she starts again, “how are you?”

“Good. Got back from a mission in Rio yesterday.”

“How’s your shoulder?”

“Still in rehab once a month or so, but doing well.”

A pause. A tight smile.

“You look well Melinda.”

Melinda stares back at Bobbi. No time like the present. 

“I’m back in the field.” 

It may be the only time she's ever seen Bobbi speechless.

“I-”

Maybe she should have called first.

“But-” Bobbi tries again, grappling for answers. 

It hurts to watch.

“I understand.”

Bobbi shakes her head in frustration. Anger even.

“No, I’m not sure you do. When did you go back?”

“A few months ago. I- felt it was time to go back.”

 _“Bullshit,”_ Bobbi hisses. To her left, Phil visibly cringes.

“Can we take this somewhere else-”

“You haven’t answered my calls since the divorce. Nobody has seen you for months, and before that, you practically lived in the basement of the Triskelion.”

She stops for a moment, eyes wide, while the words pour from her lips. Then - continuing on quietly.

“I thought you’d gone through with it.”

Melinda wishes she needed to ask what Bobbi had thought _it_ was.

“I’m doing better.” It’s not a lie, she is. Having a team that needs her is as good an incentive as any to get up every morning. 

Bobbi takes a deep breath. Her hands instinctively come up as if to touch Melinda, but drop back down almost immediately. 

Melinda wishes they hadn’t.

“That certainly is good to hear.” Bobbi still looks sceptical but her shoulders have dropped back down and a soft smile tugs at her mouth. 

“Still, I don’t understand why you’re back in the field, last time we talked you were-”

“I know. But things have changed.”

“Since New York?”

She thinks about TAHITI. About watching Phil scream in agony, begging and pleading for death for _weeks_ without being able to tell anyone. She can’t go through that again.

“A lot can happen in a few months.”

Her words tightrope across a knife blade - an edge to each syllable pleading - _please, don’t_ _ask me questions I can’t give you the answer to._

Bobbi’s eyes flick to Phil, studying him. She wonders if Bobbi knows. Stops herself. _No._ Bobbi doesn’t know, she can’t know, lest Phil himself might find out and everything Melinda had fought for could crumble down around her. No Phil. No Bobbi. 

Tori and Izzy would both be dead in a matter of months, and where would that leave her?

“Well then,” Bobbi takes a deep breath and turns properly to face Coulson, “I assume Phil here brought you back into the field with some big plan of his?”

“Hello to you too Bobbi,” he says with a grin, “and this isn’t just some big plan, it’s _the_ big plan. A mobile command team courtesy of Director Fury himself.” 

“You’re telling me that Melinda May, an agent known for her immense dislike of teamwork, agreed freely to join a _mobile command team?”_

Phil shrugs. “We have a really nice Bus - it tempted May out of retirement.”

Melinda snorts out loud - catching the other two off guard.

“It wasn’t _all_ that got me out of retirement,” she looks up to meet their surprised gaze, before smirking and quietly continuing, “Phil’s good Haig travels with him on the Bus.”

They stare at her with wide eyes, until, finally, Bobbi starts to laugh. 

Phil joins in. Melinda cracks a smile.

“I’m going to head back to the team, but it’s good to see you Morse. Take care of yourself.”

Phil puts his hand on Bobbi’s arm, squeezing it gently. 

He walks away, mouthing _“don’t screw this up”_ to Melinda. 

(As if she wanted to in the first place.)

“It really is good to see you again Bobbi.” She looks down, hair hiding her smile.

She hesitates, listening to the buzz of the hub swarm around them. _Here goes._

“Do you want to grab a drink tonight?” Melinda takes a step forward into Bobbi’s personal space - close enough to touch, to brush her lips against Bobbi's.

“I’ve got the night to myself before we ship out. I have my own room upstairs that we could-”

Melinda stops dead in her tracks as Bobbi’s easy grin slides off her face. 

“I- don’t know if that’s a good idea.” Her heart jumps in her throat.

“I’m still with Lance, Melinda.”

Melinda’s walls roar as they shoot back up, gaze hardening, heart freezing.

“The merc?” She spits back, “I thought that was just a fling.”

Bobbi’s eyes cringe at the corners; the tips of her lips dipping into a frown.

“It’s become more than that. I care about him Mel.”

Melinda feels her chest tightening, breath escaping as a harsh laugh at Bobbi’s words.

“Of _course_ you do. You always did love the ones who idolised you best.”

She hasn’t even met Hunter yet, but the fire in her throat laps at her words, burning them.

Bobbi's face is impassive, as she stares back at her ex-wife. She takes a step back, widening the distance between them. Melinda misses it instantly.

“That’s not fair Melinda.”

She knows it’s true. She knows she has no right to judge Bobbi for moving on. 

“You’re the one who left.”

And, it would seem, Bobbi knows that too.

Melinda takes a steadying breath and feels all the fight leave her body.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Melinda I-”

“No, it’s fine Bobbi. I need to go, take care of yourself.”

She’s already turning away as Bobbi replies a soft _“you too”_ under her breath.

(Just as she turns, Melinda sees Bobbi’s eye go wide. A shadow crosses her face, she throws her arms out towards Melinda, yelling and-)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi Friends! Apologies for the delay in getting this chapter out - I've been interviewing for postgrad jobs and my mental health has taken a bit of a hit over the last few months. I am actually really proud of this chapter. It's dialogue heavy but I think it's a really important part of the Bobbi/Melinda story I'm telling here. I swear the next chapter will actually give more information about what's going on but for the moment I kinda wanted to lay the groundwork for their relationship and how it deviates from canon. It's also angsty as hell which I love and hopefully you all will too. Please keep commenting/kudos-ing! I'm so thankful for all of your support and I can't wait for you to read the rest of this story!!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melinda takes a steadying breath and feels all the fight leave her body.
> 
> “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
> 
> “Melinda I-”
> 
> “No, it’s fine Bobbi. I need to go, take care of yourself.”
> 
> She’s already turning away as Bobbi replies a soft “you too” under her breath.
> 
> (As she turns, Bobbi’s eye go wide. A shadow crosses her face, she throws her arms out towards Melinda, yelling and-)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok kids, strap in. This is a long one!
> 
> Also FYI there is a brief sexy-time between our lovely ladies in this chapter!

And- nothing. 

The shadow is gone.

Melinda's back at the Triskelion, up on the mezzanine overlooking the gym.

The gym where several years ago (also, _somehow,_ several hours ago) she had watched Bobbi at her breaking point - yelling at her over Bahrain and bullet wounds and the insurmountable, hollowed out space between them.

(The beginning of the end)

Melinda grips the guard rail until her knuckles turn white.

_Fuck._

She jerks her body around, searching for the shadow she’d seen reflected in Bobbi’s eyes. She finds nothing of interest - just a mop, some old gym supplies, a SHIELD-issued sweater. A green clipboard clasped in her sweaty palm. Nothing scary except for unfinished paperwork.

Even so, the hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention as she considers the blind fear she’d seen in Bobbi’s eyes. Bobbi had lunged towards her, arms reaching out to...warn? Protect? Melinda’s stomach squeezes uncomfortably at the thought of Bobbi in danger. 

Melinda’s heart beats loudly in her ears, bringing her back to the present. No, the _past?_

Her head spins, all sense of chronological time lost within an ever-changing web of memories.

She needs to stick to the facts.

Phil stands below her feet, dapper in a new suit with a full head of hair. He waves to her - his collar slightly askew, showing off the unblemished skin of his sternum. 

_Ok,_ she thinks, _before TAHITI._

She sees other familiar faces too. Agents Davies and Hartley spar to her left while Amador trains alone with a boxing bag in the center of the room. Barton swings from the rafters like he owns the place, winking at her as he passes. And _oh, of course -_ she thinks, spotting a shock of blonde hair weaving through the crowd - Bobbi’s here too, sparring against Jasper Sitwell in the corner. 

Bobbi backflips away from Sitwell to avoid his blows, dancing around him with an unbelievable lightness on her toes. It takes a single well-placed blow to his chest to get him on the ground. Another to see him face down on the mats tapping out. Bobbi, young and cocky, smirks at him; arms slick with sweat, biceps flexing as she levers her weight off of his crumpled form. She says something to him, likely sarcastic, lets out a laugh, before offering her hand to help him back up.

Melinda’s gut clenches at the sight.  
She wonders if he was Hydra from the start.

(It doesn’t escape Melinda’s notice that her death is inexplicably interwoven with Bobbi’s life in a host of complex and beautiful and _painful_ ways).

Melinda looks at her hands on the rail. She’s not wearing her rings, so she knows she’s somewhere between their wedding and first mission together.

Maybe soon after that, she muses, considering the fringe that Bobbi’s still sporting from their time at the Brooklyn gym. 

And then, she remembers. 

Melinda had been sent to the Triskelion to recruit a new Strike team after the success she and Bobbi had found in dismantling the smuggling ring. They had barely talked since - whisked away to separate debriefing sessions the moment they'd returned to base - later drowned in paperwork and politics and one world-ending event after another. 

Far too busy for small talk. Or coffee. Or a relationship built in ambiguity - settling just on the dangerous side of _maybe, maybe this could be something-_

_No,_ she thinks, she’s here to find herself a new team. 

First up: Hartley. 

Smart, quick thinking and a trusted friend. Rougher than most of the uptight suits in Shield, but would follow her lead where it counted. Rumours, however, said she was in the Director’s sights for a long-term mission into merc territory. In Melinda’s experience, it was ever good to conflict with Fury’s plans. She crosses Hartley off the list.

Next: O’Brien. 

A solid punch and good with a sniper rifle. A decent pilot who can serve under a woman without being a dick about it. His excellent taste in music seals the deal. She stars his name.

Next: Davis and Piper 

Not the brightest Shield has to offer, but both are hard working agents who could do with a big mission like this to make it further up the chain. Both good for team morale, and reliable in a fight. She stars them too.

 _Now we’re getting somewhere_.

Without further thought, she crosses out Sitwell and Amador. She doesn’t get on particularly well with either, and honestly, they just weren’t the right agents for this job. Barton also gets crossed off - he’s too wild for the structure of a Strike team, and besides - Fury definitely has bigger plans for him. 

_So._ A sniper. Two agents to watch her back. She just needs a commander and another specialist and the team will be complete. She’d already asked Phil to come along for the ride, and as for her specialist -

Bobbi would be the obvious choice. Athletic, smart as a whip and a damn good shot when she needed to be. Could talk her way out of any situation. A lot of complicated feelings would come up if they worked together again, but nothing more could happen if Melinda ended up being her supervisor. On the other hand, if recruited as her other specialist, she’d get to see Bobbi every day for the foreseeable future, giving them the perfect opportunity to - well, get _closer_ to say the least. Melinda’s shoulders shudder involuntarily at the thought of Bobbi’s fingers sliding her bra straps off her shoulders, kissing her jawline, laughing as Melinda’s tongue darts out to circle her nipple -

 _Shit_ , she thinks, forcing that train of thought to an abrupt stop. 

Maybe not a good idea after all.

(Melinda still draws a star by Bobbi’s name, just for the hell of it.)

_Done._

The agents are packing up below - unwrapping wrists and unloading weights. She turns to find Victoria Hand waiting at the top of the stairwell with a matching green clipboard.

“You look happy with yourself.” Victoria’s smug grin doesn’t slacken at her words.

“I’ve just scored your golden girl for my new team.” 

Melinda feels her heart beat against her throat.

“My _golden girl_? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Tori tilts her head to the side, considering.

“I saw you and Morse at the end of your last mission. You looked _cosy_.”

“Vic _toria,”_ Melinda’s laughs, tone scolding, “are you jealous?”

Hand gives her a side-eyed look.

“You know I’m not. I’m looking out for you Melinda, sleeping with a junior agent is serious business. I know you’ve done it before, but-”

“We are _not_ sleeping together,” Melinda hisses back, laughter disappearing as she becomes acutely aware of Bobbi packing up the mats below.

“But you were, right?”

Melinda’s almost embarrassed to tell the truth - that she had fallen this hard for Bobbi in a musty gym office over entwined fingers and half smiles and pulses thrumming beneath the skin. Falling every time Bobbi’s fingers grazed across her shoulders in silent support; falling deepest when she’d wake up to Bobbi’s coconut curls sprawled across her pillow, glowing a soft yellow-orange in the morning light.

Melinda never let herself reach out to touch them (to touch _her_ ) - acutely aware of the need for clear boundaries on undercover ops, especially on missions where so many lives were at stake.

Bobbi, she reasons, needed support to get herself through the awful things she saw every day on that op. Melinda was the only person there she could trust. It was natural that they had gotten closer. Maybe that was all it was.

But now? None of Melinda’s past relationships came close to resembling the months she’d spent with Bobbi, leaving her bewitched by the possibility of _more_. She’d never considered initiating a proper relationship with another agent before - nothing beyond the friends with benefits routine she’d had with Tori. The risk makes her skin feel hot and itchy and so very exposed, but _maybe_ -

Victoria clears her throat and Melinda meets her gaze, head slightly tilted as her glasses slip lower down her nose. 

“ _Oh,_ ” she whispers, quickly followed by a harsh laugh.

“What?” Melinda snaps back, moving to walk around the other woman. After all, she’s got a replacement specialist to find.

Victoria reaches out, holding Melinda’s shoulder firmly to stop her from leaving.

“You have feelings for her?”

“I-” she goes to lie, but the words don’t come. In truth, she doesn’t know the answer to Tori’s question.

Tori nods, as if Melinda’s silence had answered her question in elaborate detail. Maybe it had.

“I see. Well I’m hardly in a position to lecture you on the ethics of intra-agency fraternisation,” Victoria lets go of her shoulder and lowers her voice to a soft murmur, “just be careful Melinda.” 

Melinda nods, fighting her emotions to remain stoic despite Victoria’s warning.

“It looks like someone’s waiting for you,” Tori nods towards the gym below, now cleared of all agents except for a single blonde woman lazily stretching her glutes in the corner. Victoria raises her eyebrows at the sight. Melinda struggles to keep her jaw off the floor.

“Let me know if it works out. You know Izzy loves gossip,” Victoria laughs loudly as she walks off, heels clicking down the corridor.

She doesn’t remember descending the stairs, walking up to Bobbi. But here she is. Face to face with the woman she hasn’t been able to get out of her head for the last two months. 

“Bobbi,” she breathes. Tries again.

“Agent Morse.”

Bobbi nods to her, smiling gently.

“It’s been a while, Agent May.”

This isn’t at all like their reunion at the Hub. They’ve got no trauma behind them; no fallen marriage to resurrect. Tension crackles like electricity between each moment of silence. They don’t ask about the other’s well being - not about their families, or weekend plans, or how they’re coping after everything that went on in their last mission. None of that matters right now.

“I came here to recruit you,” Melinda murmurs, stepping towards Bobbi.

“I’m glad you didn’t.” Bobbi’s hand reaches out, twirling the ends of Melinda’s hair around her fingers.

“Why?”

“So I can do this.”

Bobbi leans down and kisses Melinda square on the lips. Melinda sinks into the kiss, pushing herself against Bobbi’s body, skin to skin, as close as she can get to the other woman. It’s messy and rough and Melinda can feel Bobbi’s fingers bruising her hips as they move together. Melinda leaves Bobbi’s lips, teeth out, mapping her way around the outer shell of her ear, searching for that sweet spot just over her carotid- she scrapes her front teeth over the delicate skin, hitting it immediately. Bobbi lets out a guttural moan that turns Melinda’s insides to liquid as it vibrates through her skin. Bobbi’s fingertips trail the hem of her tank, breaking away for a split second to strip it off - leaving Melinda in a black sports crop; stomach toned and nipples peaked. Bobbi takes a moment to herself, admiring Melinda, before kissing her jaw; her neck. She licks the hollow between Melinda’s collarbones and by _God_ Bobbi hasn’t even made it past her shoulders, she shouldn’t be _this_ involved _this_ soon. 

Melinda blinks and they’re stumbling back to Bobbi’s bunk like cadets in their twenty-somethings, drunk on cheap vodka and stolen kisses - keen for a good time and a good lay, but instead now with a _thrumming_ beneath the surface that neither of them have felt in years. Bobbi swipes open her door, closing it as soon as Melinda’s slinks inside. She presses Melinda up against the frosted glass, enjoying the smirk she receives in response. 

“Are you going to tie _me_ up this time, Agent Morse?” 

Bobbi bites down on her lip, lips quirking up into a grin around it. 

It might be the sexiest thing Melinda has ever seen.

“I may just take you up on that request one day, Agent May.”

Melinda lets out a hearty laugh - an uncommon sound, even at the very start. Bobbi stops briefly to savour the beauty of it. She doesn’t stop long though, not with Melinda’s hands snaking up her body - one diving into her hair, tugging at her roots, the other pulling against her left nipple.

“Oh _God_ -”

Melinda shoots her a smug grin before returning to her work, this time with her mouth. Bobbi can feel her smiling against her skin, feeling the need pool between her legs as Melinda grazes her teeth over each breast. She holds Melinda’s cheek briefly, stripping off her shirt and bra in one smooth movement, before edging away - beckoning with a single finger towards the bed. 

Melinda’s vision swirls a little and she finds herself on the bed - Bobbi leaning over her, kissing her like both of their lives depended on it. Bobbi’s pants have disappeared and she’s straddling Melinda’s core, hands moving _down_ until she sees Melinda’s eyes flicker, pupils wide and black. Bobbi slips in a finger, then two and Melinda’s feeling so _fucking_ good when movement catches her eye in the corner of Bobbi’s room. She scrubs her eyes, trying (failing) to ignore Bobbi’s ministrations while she looks again, this time seeing a large shadow splayed across the wall, long bony fingers reaching out to them-

“Bobbi,” she hisses, pushing the other woman off of her.

Bobbi looks up - confused and hurt - before spotting the encroaching darkness. Fear floods her eyes once again, and finally Melinda understands what had her so afraid at the Hub. 

This _thing_ feels like death and despair personified. As it turns towards her, a hundred moments flash before her eyes in an instant. Katya’s body draped lifelessly across her bloodied knees. The handle of Victoria’s coffin grasped tightly in her hand. Tears streaming down Phil’s face as he cries out for death. Daisy bleeding out of a bullet wound in Phil’s arms. Fitz drowning, turning, then dying in front of her. Jemma trying to hold onto everybody’s pain by herself but crumbling under the agony of it all. Robin dying in her arms - erethral to the very end; threads of white hair curling softly behind her ears, eyes open and child-like.

Her wife, crying at their kitchen table, saying _“Melinda, I don’t think we can do this anymore -”_

“Melinda _-_

Her body shakes.

“Mel, wake _up_. _”_

Melinda’s eyes snap open to meet Bobbi’s frantic gaze above.

“What. Was _. That_?” she grits out - head thudding painfully behind her eyes as her lungs heave for each breath.

Bobbi ignores her, clambering off the bed to start throwing random items of clothing at her from the floor of her bunk. Melinda catches them haphazardly, breathing a brief sigh of relief to see that the _thing_ they’d found is no longer in the corner. Melinda pulls on a pair of black jeans that are far too long and far too distressed to be her own. She throws a knitted red sweater over the top that screams _Victoria_ before Bobbi grabs her and hurries them to the door. At least she knows now why Bobbi had been so jumpy all this time, looking over her shoulder, protecting her at the Hub. 

They’re on the run. 

“I thought we would be safe here. Obviously not.” Bobbi huffs, peering out the door before beckoning Melinda into the corridor with her. 

“We need to hurry - the safety intervals are getting shorter. You don’t have much time left. God _damnnit Jemma.”_

Bobbi grabs her wrist and starts running, pulling her along behind.

“Jemma - what? What’s going on Bobbi?”

Bobbi continues to ignore her as they run, bare feet barely making a sound on the linoleum floors. Bobbi frowns as they reach a fork in the hallways, slowing briefly to decide which way forwards. Melinda takes the opportunity to yank her arm from Bobbi’s grasp, readying herself to fight Bobbi for- answers? A way out? She's not entirely sure.

Melinda's eyes dart down, watching her hands become bloodied and clean over and over again as she tilts them back and forth like a shifting postcard. Bobbi transitions between alive and dead before her eyes - eyes bright, pink lips apart and yelling - shifting to glazed pupils and bruised blue skin within seconds of the other. Melinda grips the wall behind her as the images come faster and sharper than before. Memories? Hallucinations? She’s not sure about that either.

She wonders if her brain is finally shutting down from the weight of the death she's been carrying around for so long. She’s seen it in countless agents; the old war horses who finally call it a day after the destruction has haunted the insides of their eyelids and crawled underneath their skin for far too long. She saw it in herself after Bahrain. After losing Phil, and Andrew, and Bobbi in that bar on their last night-

Bobbi’s stepping closer, frantically beckoning her to move; turning every few seconds to check back the way they came. Her form has settled on this midpoint of alive and dead - skin creased and tired, hair greying, voice remaining strong.

“No,” Melinda says, arms outstretched, “not until you tell me what the _fuck_ is going on.”

“There’s no time, Melinda, we have to keep running. It’s the only way they can bring you back.”

“Back from _what?”_

Bobbi looks at her with such sorrow in her eyes. Her heart thuds painfully in her chest.

“You’re dying Melinda.”

She’d known that all along. It’s why she struggled so much at the start, standing in their kitchen together, fighting the lovely haze of memory that Bobbi had pulled her into.

“And you? Are you dead?”

Bobbi stares at her for a moment, lips apart, eyebrows furrowed; looking, for the moment, younger than ever. Abruptly, Bobbi pulls her gaze away, searching again for the shadows in their wake. Melinda wonders if Bobbi ever intended to tell her the full truth - in life or in death

“These are your memories, Melinda, some true, some twisted. I tried to hide you in safe places; our apartment, the Triskelion, the Hub. None of it worked. Your body is bleeding out and that _thing_ has come to claim you." Bobbi's voice cracks in all the wrong places, eyes wide, imploring Melinda to take heed.

Melinda has so many questions, most beginning with _why,_ or _how_ , but Bobbi's looking behind them again and she feels her head spin with the weight of it all.

And then, the shadow re-emerges. 

Dark, spindly legs curl around the corridor behind them, knocking the breath from her lungs.

Bobbi's hand grabs hers, ice cold skin against her own, and pulls her away; their feet thud thud _thudding_ down the corridor.

For a time they run. It could be seconds, it could be hours. All Melinda knows, is that she's reaching the end.

(Which end? The corridor? The nightmare? Her life?)

And yet still they run, on and on and _on_ until finally, Bobbi slows her feet to release Melinda's hand.

She can hear the shadow following behind - a disconcerting hum accompanied by intermittent scratching as the creature pulls itself along the corridor towards them.

"I’ll hold it off.”

“No, Bobbi-”

“It wants _you,_ Melinda,” Bobbi pushes her back down the corridor, “ _p_ _romise me_ you'll keep running. No matter what you see."

And just like that, Melinda's back in that diner on Fifth street in the wake of New York - the last time Bobbi had pleaded with her.

Bobbi sits across from her in the booth, hands clasped, prayer-like in front of her chest.

"I want to make this work Melinda."

Melinda, broken from Bahrain, exhausted from New York, and devastated from losing Phil, has nothing but her training to fall back on. 

So, she asks herself, _is there a threat?_

 _Yes._ Melinda May, _The Calvary_ , is a threat to one Barbara Morse.

And so, she does what she's best at, and fixes the problem.

“I don’t love you anymore.”

(But _oh_ she does).

Brows furrowed, Bobbi reaches across the table for Melinda’s hand.

“You don’t mean that.”

No. She doesn't, but Melinda only knows how to do one thing - _protect_ \- and she's acutely aware of what caused Bobbi the most pain.

Melinda pulls back her hand, rises from the table, tips generously, and shrugs on her coat.

She spares a brief look at Bobbi back at the table, tears now falling down her cheeks ( _she did that_ -), before turning away.

 _“Please,_ Melinda", she hisses, voice wavering, "come home. We can fix this.”

Bobbi Morse had never been one to plead. She would laugh, and cry, and yell - but never this.

It’s enough to make her pause, but not enough to make her stay. 

She won't ignore Bobbi's pleading voice again.

She won't make that mistake twice.

Melinda looks back to Bobbi, her wife standing strong behind her in the corridor as the shadows encroach. 

_“I promise.”_

And then she runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm entering a new, stricter phase of covid lockdown and evidently I have nothing else to do except be productive so here is a new chapter! It's a long one so I hope you enjoy it - please keep commenting!!! It's such a massive motivator to keep writing. I hope this chapter illuminates a bit more about what's going on - it's becoming a little sci-fi with our new reaper friend (i.e. the thing, as Melinda's been calling it) but hopefully you're all here for the ride and will enjoy the turn it has taken. I'm kinda imagining a dementor-like thing appearing out of the blue to the ladies while they're getting it on (sorry JK). I swear these two will have a God honest conversation about their feelings/what's going on very soon!! Thank you all for reading!
> 
> \- your tired, angst-filled author


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melinda doesn’t look back.
> 
> No - she runs forwards - vision blurring, eyes streaming, lips blistering in the bone-dry heat.
> 
> (She will not make the mistakes of those who have run this path before her).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Looking Back
> 
> Remember me before I was a heap of salt,  
> the laughing child who seldom did  
> as she was told or came when she was called,  
> the merry girl who became Lot’s bride,  
> the happy woman who loved her wicked city.  
> Do not remember me with pity.  
> I saw you plodding on ahead  
> into the desert of your pitiless faith.  
> Those springs are dry, that earth is dead.  
> I looked back, not forward, into death.  
> Forgiving rains dissolve me, and I come  
> still disobedient, still happy, home.
> 
> \- Ursula Le Guin

Melinda doesn’t look back.

 _No_ \- she runs forwards - vision blurring, eyes streaming, lips blistering in the bone-dry heat.

She is Orpheus climbing out of Hell, body arching back to glimpse his lover trailing behind.

She is Lot’s wife on the run, pausing to watch flames engulf the only home she’s ever known.

Their ghosts swarm around her, whispering as one in their lovely, traitorous voice. 

_Turn, turn, turn around._

(She will not make the mistakes of those who have run this path before her).

Melinda does not think of Bobbi as she runs. 

She doesn’t imagine her bruised skin or bleeding heart as the shadows hover above, victorious.

Instead, Melinda focuses on skies painted the same blue as Bobbi’s eyes. The gentle rise and fall of rolling hills, moving up and down like Bobbi’s chest as she’d slept, curled up against Melinda’s side for an eternity in the golden morning light.

_Home, home, home._

On she runs.

The corridors stay the same, but the warmth gradually leaves her bones. It’s not her surroundings becoming colder - instead a bitter chill that crawls down her spine, refusing to let go. Cold adrenaline seeping from nerve to nerve, preparing her for danger. 

Her body knows where it’s going, even if she does not.

Still, she does not look back.

Hot blood is trailing down her arm; thick, warm and unsettlingly sticky.

She spares it barely a glance, mostly out of shock, but everything is different when she looks back up. Bright, artificial lighting blinds her and she staggers to a stop, falling to her knees as her head spins circles around her body. Her head aches, her arm bleeding through hastily wrapped bandages. Blood stains her hands. Real this time, she thinks. 

She thinks about the scar she’d been left with from this very gunshot wound. The monotone voice crackling through her hidden line, stating _“Nick Fury is dead”_ right before everything had gone to hell - and suddenly, she knows exactly where she is. 

The Fall of Shield.

A shrill ring echoes off the walls of the interrogation room and she scrambles to find the source to stop its God-awful screech, cuffed hands outstretched and grasping.

It’s her phone. Philip Coulson, long time Commander and famed Agent of Shield, has left her, a presumed traitor, with a working phone.

He’s extraordinarily lucky she’s _not_ Hydra.

_For fuck’s sake Phil._

She answers without checking the caller ID, focusing entirely on levering her broken body off the floor. Static fills the line accompanied by heavy breathing. There’s a voice, she registers, but her brain can’t make sense of the words it’s saying. She shakes her head, trying to clear it.

"Mel, can you hear me?" 

"Bobbi? Fuck-” Melinda staggers up to her feet, clutching her bleeding arm before continuing, “Bobbi are you there?”

“Yeah Mel, I’m here.”

She breathes a sigh of relief at Bobbi’s voice, slumping against the wall trying to figure out what the _hell_ had happened. She’d been running, on and on, and then - _this_. 

Another memory for her to wade through to get to the other side. 

Melinda looks down at the phone in her hand. She’d abandoned Bobbi back in the Hub with that shadow creature - the _reaper_ \- but somehow it’s Bobbi’s voice rattling through the phone and all of the hastily patched wounds across Melinda’s past open back up and she just _can’t_. 

(She has to)

Memories flood her mind of this day, five years past, in vivid detail:

Phil's entire body shaking as she told him about Tahiti. 

Skye ( _Daisy. Daisy. Daisy-_ ) holding a gun to her head, threatening to pull the trigger.

Fitz's eyes, wide as dinner plates, after he found her direct line to Fury.

Jemma in the belly of the beast, status unknown.

All control of the Bus overridden. All eyes pointing to her as the traitor. 

Shield, falling before their eyes.

(The gut-wrenching discovery that she couldn't save her wife, no matter what)

Melinda’s lungs struggle to breathe under the weight of it all, the pain of having her closest allies (her _family_ ) believe her capable of betraying everything they had fought so hard for. She takes a deep breath, pushing her anguish aside to deal with her current situation. _Bobbi._

“Are you safe?”

“I-” the signal drops out momentarily, before crackling back to life, “no. I don’t think so.”

"Bob-"

"Mel -"

They cut each other off - Melinda hears pain blatant in Bobbi’s voice.

"Are you compromised?"

"Phil has me locked up, but I'm not Hydra."

" _Shit_ ,” she hisses, gunshots firing off in the background, “is he?"

She thinks of the agent who died to give the Avengers a fighting chance. The man who had believed in her from the very start; who stood by her even when she was her most broken, bitter, self-destructive self. The boy in the Captain America shirt. 

"I don't think so."

"Okay,” Bobbi’s breathing floods the line, “that's something, thank God. I'm not either."

Melinda feels something in her chest loosen at her words, despite having heard them before. Seconds later, that feeling disappears when she hears screaming in the background.

"Bobbi you need to get out of there. I can extricate you-” she squints down at her cracked watch “-at 2200 hours. Can you hold out until then?" 

And here’s the thing: Melinda _knows_ she won’t be able to make it. She’s run this very scenario through her head for hours on end since it happened, playing out every possible scenario she could imagine. So Melinda _knows_ she can't save her wife - not with a boat or a helicopter or a team of Asguardians behind her. But the pain in Bobbi’s voice twists Melinda’s rationality, even now, in a way that leaves her no choice but to fight against the inevitable.

All the while, Bobbi remains silent, leaving Melinda with an earful of static and gunshots and screaming, and then - quiet.

“Bobbi?”

The line jolts back to life - Bobbi’s breathing harsh on the other end, while Melinda tries to calm her hammering pulse.

“Bobbi?”

"It’s bad here Melinda - I really just called to say goodbye. I think this is it."

"No, give me your coordinates and I'll get you out."

"I'm on a base several thousand kilometers out at sea, you'd never get here in time," Bobbi's lets out a hoarse laugh that slides into a wet, crackling cough that racks her entire body.

Melinda knows the sound well - of broken ribs and punctured lungs and blood pooling in places where air should be.

Bobbi’s drowning on dry land. 

"Bobbi, I'll be there-"

"Mel please, just listen to me for a minute." Bobbi shifts the phone against her cheek with a groan.

"You're hurt-"

" _Mel."_

Their breaths mingle over the line.

Melinda feels a single tear resting in the crease of her eye. She refuses to let it fall.

"I'm listening."

"My team has been on edge for months, we knew something big was coming down but not this - God, never this," she takes a shaky breath, another heavy cough, "every one of them just got gunned down in front of me. And I was so- _accepting_ of it being me next, Mel. But Izzy got me out at the right moment, and now there's a handful of us still alive - Mack, Izzy, Gonzales. A few others I don't know so well," Bobbi pauses to take another shaky breath, “I should be thinking about the mission, and about Hydra, and _survival_ but all I just keep thinking -”

The line’s filled with static again and it takes every inch of Melinda’s self composure not to throw the phone at the wall. The pain is almost unbearable, waiting to hear Bobbi’s final words to her. If only she could get out of this cell, get to her-

“I wish we had more time,” Melinda jumps as Bobbi’s voice returns, whispering into the phone between harsh breaths, “I’ve missed you Mel. God, I’ve missed you. I’m sorry we didn’t make it work, I just wish-”

"Bobbi-" gunshots rain in the background

"I’ve gotta go Mel. I love you."

The line cuts out, Melinda left in the dark; hands shaking, tears trailing down her cheeks.

She has no time to grieve. 

Melinda finds herself face-to-face with Phil Coulson, _pleading_ with him to let her go. 

"I was here to protect you Coulson - nothing more. I'm sure as hell not Hydra. And now Bobbi, my _wife_ is going to die while I'm chained up in this fucking isolation cell and-"

His hand darts out to grab her wrist.

"You're not going anywhere."

"Phil-"

"No, you don’t get to _'Phil'_ me anymore. You're not someone I remotely trust - not here, and certainly not to go rogue and rescue another SHIELD agent. Look at yourself, how are you planning on helping her when you can't even help yourself Melinda!?" 

She struggles against the cuffs. She could still dislocate her thumb, fight him to get out. Commandeer a Quinjet and -

"We need you for the strike team."

_No._

"I'm going after Bobbi-"

"Bobbi can handle herself."

She lashes out at him, gets a single punch in, before Ward (God _damnnit_ ) rounds the corner with an icer pressed against her temple. She’d forgotten how much that betrayal had hurt.

"Strike team, or we leave you here for Hydra."

She fumes as they lead her away.

Time swirls and this time it’s Victoria Hand standing in front of her. 

Garrett is dirty, Jemma is safe, and her team can finally rest for a single God-damned minute before being thrust into the next disaster. It should have calmed her, but Melinda is an electric fence - tightly wound and volatile - needing more than a brief reprieve to calm the sparks jolting off of her.

Victoria sees this, and takes her aside to finally remove the handcuffs. 

Neither speak for a moment - Melinda's raw wrists held gently between Victoria's cracked red nails. It occurs to Melinda that this is the last time she will speak to Tori before Ward kills her; her death just an hour or so away. She fights against the thought of Tori’s body pressed against the Quinjet floor, alone and lifeless as blood seeps into her hair. She finds she has to fight even harder not to think about the way Izzy’s face crumpled when Phil told her the news.

Tori leans over to wipe the blood from Melinda’s cheek, and Melinda chokes on the sob stuck in her throat. 

She can’t break down now. 

She can’t do anything to change the outcome. 

She can only ask about Bobbi.

"Did anyone make it off of Gonzales’ ship?"

Instantly, Victoria knows what Melinda needs to know.

"Eleven agents made it off. We’re in the process of vetting them, then they’ll be laying low until this shit storm blows over after," Victoria looks pointedly at Melinda, squeezing her hands, “Morse and Hartley were among them.”

Victoria takes a deep breath, but Melinda just stands there, numb.

“Intel indicates around 100 Hydra agents made it onto that ship under the guise of Shield. We were infiltrated to our very core.” 

Victoria trails off, staring at a spot just to the left of Melinda’s nose - briefly consumed by the grief of not having _known_ ; to lead an organisation founded on protection, but remaining unable to keep her own people safe in the face of Hydra. After a moment, Victoria pulls Melinda’s face back into focus - taut lines caked with blood and sweat and dirt - before continuing, softly.

"Our girls are safe, Mel. I just spoke with Izzy - they're both okay."

Melinda's entire being crumbles with relief and bone-tired exhaustion. 

_Okay_ , she thinks, _okay._

Skye’s hovering awfully close-by, both curiosity and distrust written on her face, but Melinda finds she can’t drum up the energy to care who sees her emotions on display like this. Not after hearing Bobbi’s crackling breaths through the phone line, saying goodbye. 

“She’ll need proper medical attention, Victoria. A chest tube and an x-ray.”

“They’re at a safe house with a medic - once it’s safe she can be moved to a Shield hospital,” Tori looks down her glasses at Melinda, “they’ll be _okay_ , Melinda. They have each other - that’s all any of us can ask for right now.”

“She was ready to _die_ , Vic.”

Fracture lines crack across Victoria’s professional facade, skin sinking into her bones as she sucks her cheeks in.

“So were you not too long ago.”

Melinda takes a shaky breath in. 

The noises of her team fade into silence around her.

“Maybe it’s time you both have a proper conversation about all the fires you’ve walked through. See what you find in the wreckage.”

Tori’s gaze is so soft, she can hardly bear to part with it. Suddenly, she’s uncomfortably nostalgic for the nights she spent hospitalised after Bahrain. _Yes_ , Melinda had been in hell, but Tori's eyes always burned brightest in the eerie glow of the hospital equipment; lighting her way home. What she wouldn’t give to see those eyes reflecting back through the darkness once more.

Tori’s speaking again, but she can’t hear her words over the low hum that’s returned, and- _shit_ she’d almost forgotten why she was here. Melinda tears herself away from the memory, taking stock of her situation. 

The reaper is unseen but nearby, _hunting._

Her wife is bleeding out in a safe house with Isabelle Hartley. 

Another version is trapped in a dark corridor, holding off Melinda's reaper with everything she’s got. 

A third is mushroom picking in the Russian wilderness with Lance Hunter. 

And now, here stands Victoria Hand in the wake of Shield’s collapse, giving out life advice - as if she, herself, was not destined for death within the hour. 

By _God_ , Melinda is sick of this.

 _What,_ she ponders, _gives her the right to hope for any other ending to this than death?_

Briefly, she wishes to be taken by the reaper. Not wishing for Death in the way she used to - instead she feels a quiet yearning to fall into his cloaked arms. To be warm and safe and _still_ , knowing that finally, this is the end. She’s been running her entire life, and maybe, just _maybe_ , this is the peace she’s been waiting for. 

But Bobbi asked her to run, and Melinda doesn’t have it in herself to let Bobbi down again. So she forces herself to move, feet taking one step, two, _three_. Robotically, she walks between the members of her team - their movements slowing to a grinding stop as if captured entirely within this memory; sealed in like a photograph. She opens the door behind Tori - one which should lead back into the Hub. Instead, it stretches back into the corridors she’d run to get here; the many infinities of time and space winding around one another like mirrors reflecting mirrors reflecting mirrors into the dimensions that exist only between.

There is only one way to go - onwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! The feedback on Chapter Five honestly blew me away - thank you all for reading this fic and for commenting and for loving it as much as I do. We're getting close to the end now! Maybe two or three more chapters I think will do this story justice and get it finished the way I want to. Please keep commenting/kudos-ing!!! We are such a small fandom here, so I get so excited every time I hear from you.  
> Much love!  
> M


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hand in hand, Baba takes her to the garage. A flat tire greets them.
> 
> Something deep within Melinda aches to dirty her hands with engine grease and oil from the bolts holding the flat tire in place. A gnawing desire to make what is broken whole again.
> 
> After all, Melinda's always been good at fixing things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year!! I sincerely hope 2021 is better than 2020 for all of us. I have a heap that I've written over this Christmas/New Years break - so much so that the following two chapters were only meant to be one, but as per usual I have failed to stay within a word count! So here is essentially part one of the next instalment - I'll be posting the second part within a week or so. I swear we're getting to the end. I just keep tripping over new threads of Bobbi and May's life together that I want to explore. Anyway, enjoy!
> 
> **Also full disclosure all Chinese words come straight out of Google translate!!! I have no idea if they're right or not eep sorry

Melinda’s young when she opens her eyes - maybe four or five years old.

Her feet stand clad in dirty yellow gumboots, her knees muddy and grass-stained. There are tiny butterflies stitched along the hem of her dress.

Her mama has been gone for seven days now, working far away. Melinda doesn’t exactly know where she goes, but her baba says she’s off saving the world.

Melinda lies on the grass, staring out at the clouds. If she squints her eyes just right it looks like her hands are touching them. She thinks her mama might live in the sky, with the sun and the stars and all the superheroes from her comic books. 

Maybe Melinda could visit her one day.

_"Bao bao!_ ”

Melinda’s baba is calling her. It’s time!

She’s on her feet in an instant, running towards him, fast as she can.  
She jumps and he catches her, laughing softly into her hair.

Melinda grins, spreading her fingers wide over his prickly cheeks. 

Baba is spiky on the outside, but soft inside. Her mama is the opposite. 

(She loves them both anyway)

Baba puts her down.

“Time to begin hm?”

Hand in hand, Baba takes her to the garage. A flat tire greets them.

Together, they choose their weapon of choice for the fight ahead. 

Melinda wields a silver spanner the length of her arm. 

Baba peers down his glasses in deep contemplation as he selects a rusty jack from an even rustier shelf.

Something deep within Melinda aches to dirty her hands with engine grease and oil from the bolts holding the flat tire in place. A gnawing desire to make what is broken whole again.

 _Fix, fix, fix the problem_ , her mind sings to the tune of Baba’s soft, off-key humming.

Lian May returns home later that day. 

She is a wilting flower - standing beautifully dignified from afar, not a strand of hair out of place, but the closer anyone gets, the clearer her creased skin and drooping lips become. 

All Melinda sees is _home._

Melinda sprints to her mother’s side when she appears on their driveway, stopping just short of embracing her. Even as a child, she knows her mother's boundaries with an intimate familiarity that she'll one day use to greet her own. And so, Melinda straightens her dirty dress, gives a lopsided grin and mumbles a soft greeting instead.

“ _Ni hao_ Mama.”

Lian regards her daughter carefully - black smudges painting her nose and hair, mud coating her knees and boots - before responding in kind. 

The excitement gets too much and Melinda tears herself from her mother’s side to race towards the shed - gesturing wildly at the newly-changed tire on their old sedan. 

“Look Mama! Look what I fixed!”

Behind Melinda, William smiles at Lian encouragingly, beckoning her closer. 

Melinda runs haphazardly around the car, chatting in a rolling sea of Mandarin and English and four-year-old that neither adult can fully keep up with. William’s eyes sing as he looks up at Lian - _look, look, look at what our daughter can do._

Their daughter, Lian realises, is a wild thing. 

Melinda’s hair is messy, her feet are dirty - but her hands are clean as they reach for the sky, and for Baba, and along the windows of their car - tiny hands sideswiping dangerously close to Lian’s own heart. She finds herself wondering how any daughter of hers could be so _free_.

Meanwhile, Melinda stops in her tracks. Her mama looks tired, she decides. The suitcase she carries is heavier than her usual work trip, and her frown is more pronounced - highlighting the slight misalignment of lipstick and lip. Baba’s eyes glisten when he looks at Mama, and Melinda realises, perhaps for the first time, that maybe her mama’s home is in the clouds and not with them.

But Melinda can only hold onto one thought at a time, and by the time she’s pondered it, she’s already sweeping Lian up in an intricate story about all of the things she missed while she was gone - about the neighbour’s dogs, and the bright red flowers she planted with Baba, and the spider that now lives in the shower because her and Baba are too scared to move it. For a moment, the cracks in Lian’s wilting spine fuse back together; the director of the CIA standing tall beside her daughter after three weeks in hell.

 _Maybe,_ Lian May thinks, exhaling, _maybe this is enough._

And in that moment, standing in the brilliant sunshine with her daughter, it was.

(After all, Melinda’s always been good at fixing things)

__

Melinda, ever moving, runs from her mother’s side to find herself _elsewhere._

She’s more aware of her surroundings this time - a more recent memory perhaps. Her body feels quieter and older and _taller_ than before. Not nearly as raw as in the wake of Bahrain, yet far removed from that child on the grass, dreaming of heroes in the sky.

Melinda sits in the Quinjet cockpit, maneuvering through dark clouds to avoid the onslaught of Hydra firepower trailing behind. Melinda’s pulse hammers against her throat, but it’s not the lingering threat of death that has her rattled - rather the sudden materialisation of her ex-wife and a very frazzled biochemist through the roof of her aircraft. Trip looks over at her from the passenger seat, his face settling into his characteristic grin despite the danger they’re in. Melinda’s heart aches and burns in her chest as she takes him in. 

“Looking a little on edge there Agent May.” Melinda’s soft expression morphs into a glare as she refuses to dignify Trip’s question with a reply. Trip laughs under his breath, shaking off her glare like it’s nothing.

“Come on girl, you don’t need to be worried. You know she broke it off with Hunter.”

Melinda does, indeed, know this. Primarily because Hunter’s been going on about his demonic ex-wife for weeks now, and she’s _very nearly_ strangled him in front of their entire team. 

They land, and slowly, she and Trip follow the team inside, still unseen at the back of the pack. By the time they catch up, Bobbi is standing in the middle of the corridor - shockingly brunette, wearing a red Hydra coat that Melinda despises immediately. 

Later, she’ll dig it out of the garbage and set it alight in the cargo bay, watching with an ugly grin fueled by anger and vindication and golden relief until the very last blood-red threads have been reduced to a fiery mess of ash beneath her boots.

The team surrounds Bobbi in a tight circle, her magnetic charm untarnished after all of these years. Phil welcomes Bobbi to the base and Jemma stammers her way through each conversation - hovering dangerously between excitement and outright flirtation. Mack grins as he engulfs his partner in a giant hug, all the while Hunter throws bitter insults and side-eyed glares at his ex-wife. Amongst everything, Bobbi catches her gaze immediately. Her face sparks alight, eyes alive, grin blinding, and Melinda can’t help the smile that creeps onto her face. 

_God_ , she’s missed her.

Jemma’s still talking - a clear product of the adrenaline she’s been living on, and the absolute adoration she now has for Bobbi - as Melinda walks up. They don’t break eye contact once. 

Bobbi winks at Melinda.

Melinda nods back.

And so, Melinda sticks around. Through Phil’s base tour, and Hunter’s offhand comments, and Mack’s recount of all the wild deceptions that Bobbi has pulled off on past missions (half of which she’d done by _Melinda’s_ side mind you) when finally, the team calls it a night. Slowly, they trundle off in their separate ways, leaving Bobbi and Melinda to collect the empty bottles left scattered around the room. Skye offers to help but Melinda declines with a gentle smile. Tells her to take the morning off of tai chi. It’s been a long week after all. 

(It is definitely not to do with the fact that her ex-wife is _here_ \- looking at Melinda with a softness that borders awfully close to love, as if she’s whole despite the cracks in her past; the scars on her skin-)

Skye leaves, and Bobbi makes the first move, taking three steps across the kitchen towards Melinda. 

They don’t need words this time. Melinda closes the distance between them, guiding Bobbi across her walls, holding her warm body firmly against her own. She feels Bobbi’s lungs move beneath her ear - _inhale,_ _exhale_ \- before her arms wrap Melinda in a tight hug. 

in her darker moments, Melinda will close her eyes and remember this very moment. The warmth of their two bodies coming together, the smell of Bobbi’s coconut shampoo lingering on her skin. The sense of _rightness_ that settles over her like a weighted blanket; heavy and safe and solid.

“I like the hair,” she says, voice muffled into Bobbi’s shoulder. 

“Thanks,” Bobbi’s harsh laugh leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. Melinda holds on tight, waiting for the towering waves to come crashing down, the anticipation as agonising as the fall.

“It doesn’t feel like me,” Bobbi replies after a few moments - voice cracking, shoulders beginning to shake, “I don’t think I’ve felt like me in a very long time.”

Melinda understands that better than most. In the nights after Bahrain, she’d spent hours beneath the shower spray, pulling at her roots, scrubbing at her skin, burning her body under the steaming water until she was red and raw all over - this fervent need to feel _something_ besides the weight of that girl’s body across her knees. The next night she’d taken a pair of clippers to her hair, reflecting sharp and shiny in the bathroom light, and shaved off every piece of hair she could reach. Bobbi'd barged in, alarmed at the noise, and the inherent danger of leaving Melinda alone in the bathroom in the days following Bahrain, and stopped in shock at the door. Melinda locked eyes with her wife in the mirror, wielding a steely determination that cried _just try and stop me_. Looking back, thinking of Bobbi's warm smile and teary eyes, Melinda realises she needn’t have worried.

“Will you do the back?’ Melinda’s voice was hoarse, the first words she’d spoken in days, as she held the clippers out to Bobbi.

Bobbi'd taken a deep breath in.

“ _Of course,_ Melinda.”

So yes, Melinda understands a little of what Bobbi's feeling; this inherent need to strip off the parts of herself that are much too heavy to breathe under. She grips Bobbi a little tighter in her arms, trying to find the words Bobbi needs to hear. Finally, she decides.

“We have blonde dye in the bathroom if you want to change it back.”

Bobbi shuts her eyes, humming her ascent as tears track down her skin.

“I think that would be for the best.” 

Bobbi's voice cracks and Melinda rocks her side to side, holding her upright as she fights to compose herself. No one else is awake to hear Bobbi’s soft sobs echoing down the hall, just these two women holding onto each other for dear life as the waves topple on up up _up_ , before crashing down over them.

Later, after Bobbi has grieved for the part of herself she’s lost; the part of herself that’s changed, Melinda hands Bobbi a bottle over the bathroom threshold.

“Since when do Shield bases have hair dye?”

“Hunter went undercover at a 90’s rave,” Melinda meets Bobbi’s gaze, eyes laughing, “he decided on frosted tips - it was _not_ a good look.”

“I hope you took photos.”

Melinda looks back at her, deadpan.

“They’re taped up on my wall.”

Bobbi’s laugh is loud and melodious, catching on all the jagged parts of Melinda’s heart. 

“It’ll be good to see you back as a blonde,” Melinda says softly, turning to leave before Bobbi stops her.

“Will you do it?’

Melinda takes a long breath in. 

“ _Of course,_ Bobbi.”

They walk to the shower. 

Bobbi is mechanical in her movements - barely holding onto consciousness as she rocks lightly on her feet, eyes half lidded and heavy, the weight of her mission finally hitting home. Melinda quickly strips down to her underwear. She touches Bobbi’s arm gently, seeking permission, before helping her to do the same. Melinda’s eyes catch on the new scars marking Bobbi’s skin ( _look at what they did to you-)_ before guiding her into the waiting cubicle. Warm water rushes over them both, and Melinda guides Bobbi’s head under the stream - raking her fingers through Bobbi’s hair to let the water through. Before long, she’s wrapping Bobbi up in a fluffy white towel and seating her on the edge of the bath, warming the dye between her fingers.

 _Root to tip. Root to tip. Root to tip,_ over and over again. 

_Fix, fix, fix what is amiss._

Melinda opens the bathroom door when they’re done. 

Bony fingers curl around the door frame. A cloaked figure awaits her on the other side. 

Her gut sinks and her hands sweat and suddenly the only thing she can see is her wife, crumpled in a hospital bed after she’d been shot in Paris all those years ago. Clint hovers around in restless guilt, but Melinda doesn’t have it in her to absolve him, only the means to tightly grip Bobbi’s cold hands and pray to whatever God brought her out of Bahrain to do the same for Bobbi. 

And just like that, Melinda's back in the bathroom, looking into the face of death. 

Her reaper's face is all bone - no lips, no eyes, no gentle slopes - just sharp lines melting into blurred circles where his features should be. It haunts every cell in her body but she cannot look away.

 _No,_ she thinks, _it’s too soon._

So she shuts the door, takes a breath, and runs the other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also yes I know only Trip was flying the plane when Bobbi and Jemma escaped Hydra, but I liked the angst of this better. 
> 
> Kudos and comments keep me going!!! Please let me know what you think!!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s springtime. Melinda can smell cut grass through the open window - the little white curtains they’d bought flapping gently in the wind. Melinda takes a deep breath. Finally, after all of the death and pain they’d been through - her favourite memory; a last reprieve before the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the longest chapter I’ve written, and it is my favourite. If I was naming my chapters, I’d name it something like 'Jeremy Bearimy, baby' or 'hanging out in the dot of the i' (yes that episode of tgp fucking hurt) or 'all of the self-indulgent angst/found family the author wanted desperately to write so she threw it all into one single chapter.'
> 
> I hope you love it.

Daisy's feet are in her lap on the couch.

Melinda would push them off but Daisy's eyes are laughing and her hands are clapping and her lips are grinning as Fitz tells them all of his grand rescue from a military prison while they were stuck in space - arms flying around the place, adamant that Hunter had rescued him with _four_ _bloody ferrets!_ And suddenly all of Melinda's icy edges melt at the sight of this girl who has been so lost and so hurt far too many times, now sitting here in ripped jeans, with messy hair and a beer in hand, surrounded by her family. _Glowing._

Phil's leaving. Dying really. But he's died before and this time- well, at least he's ready to go. He's spent years in the clouds, cried through weddings and stood somber at funerals. He's been to space, and back in time, and become the director of the biggest spy agency in the country. But the team? They were the real joy of Phil's extra years; the daughter he'd found in a van, the kids from the Academy who weren't cleared for combat. The mechanic. The Yoyo. The Mockingbird.

The _Calvary._

All seen beyond their titles and their traumas. 

All loved deeply by one Phillip J Coulson. 

Melinda raises her glass to him in silent farewell. 

He raises his glass back, his smile small but genuine - eyes glistening.

Opposite her, Bobbi sits on a couch alone, legs folded into an origami triangle beneath her. Unlike the rest of the team, she's not listening to Fitz's story; not toasting Phil's farewell. She looks tired, eyes heavily bagged with a smattering of purple-green bruises trailing across her temple. Melinda wants to graze the pads of her fingers across Bobbi's broken skin. 

_Fix fix fix-_

Bobbi is not supposed to be here. She should be on the run from the Russian government - not at the Lighthouse on the day Phil left for Tahiti.

Bobbi's gaze burns through Melinda's eyes.

 _Run,_ she mouths.

__

Melinda's in bed, wide awake as Bobbi sleeps on beside her. 

_Good_ , she thinks, Bobbi needs the rest.

Broken and bruised, the woman she loves lies awfully still, eyebrows furrowed and lips moving amid a restless dream. Bobbi's fingers are bandaged from the rusty pins Ward forced under her nails, through to the bone. Bobbi’s chest is held together with Jemma’s tight stitches and antiseptic creams and gauze aplenty from the gunshot he ripped through her ribs. Acid lurks at the back of Melinda’s throat - there since it happened. Every time she feels her own pulse thudding away she's back wrenching herself out of Phil’s arms, watching Bobbi code on Jemma’s table. Every time she catches Bobbi mid-nightmare, mouth agape, eyes wide and black as night, she feels her chest crumple under the weight of all she could not do; could not fix. Melinda’s guilt is a snake coiled up beneath her sternum - growing bigger with every passing year, hissing well into the night, _why oh why didn’t you kill the bastard when you’d had the chance?_

Melinda forces herself to focus on Bobbi. She’ll be here this time at least. Through the rehab, the sleepless nights - the frustration and the fitness testing and the dressing changes. 

Beside her, Bobbi whimpers in her sleep - fingers grasping for a chair that isn’t there; bracing against ropes that have long since been cut away. Melinda smooths her hand over Bobbi's brow, whispers into her ear, runs fingers down her arm. The woman softens beneath her touch, curling her body towards Melinda's warmth as her breathing eases out once more. Slowly, Melinda reaches out to braid her fingers through Bobbi's. 

_It will get better,_ she whispers into Bobbi's hair, _there is no other way._

__

It’s Bobbi’s turn to cook. She's been in the team for six months now, but remains yet to sleep in the bunk Phil had prepared. Melinda’s bunk, on the other hand, has shifted from military-level precision towards a messy, nostalgic warmth. Bobbi’s favourite blue sweater lies draped over the armchair by the bed, her toothbrush sitting alongside Melinda’s in a pot on the bathroom sink. A single photo is taped up in the corner of Melinda’s mirror - a hazy image of two women in trailing white lace, foreheads touching under a shower of golden light from the window above. 

Three weeks ago, Melinda retired early to her bunk after a particularly gruelling mission to find the photo had materialised in her absence. She’d blinked twice, fingers reaching out to graze Bobbi’s form, remembering the feel of Bobbi’s skin against her own on the best day of her life. Their wedding hadn’t been legal. Their country had refused to acknowledge the home they’d found in each other. But their love was real. The blurry photos Maria had taken were proof of that. When Bobbi slipped into bed hours later smelling like whiskey and perfume and minty-fresh toothpaste, Melinda snaked an arm out to pull her in close, kissing the top of her head and whispering into her ear- _I missed you. I missed you. I missed us._

Back in the kitchen, Melinda sets the table - pulling two cartons of beer from the fridge. With only the bubbling pot to keep them company, Melinda rests her palm along the curve of Bobbi's spine, thumb running figure eights around the lip of each vertebrae. Bobbi hums in response, leaning her weight into Melinda's arms as she waits for the pasta to cook. The ease with which they’d fallen back together is an ever-constant relief for Melinda; how their bodies still tessellate in the morning light, slotting together like they were the last two pieces of a puzzle nobody thought to align.

Daisy’s voice echoes down the hall, followed by Yoyo’s low laugh. As one, they step away from one another; Bobbi’s spine straightening to stand on her own while Melinda’s hands busy themselves in cleaning up the bench. The rest of the team wander in behind Daisy, bringing with them a flurry of voices talking, laughing, _loving_ one another in a way that words can never fully capture. Melinda smiles softly as she watches her team (her _family_ ) file in. Ever so slowly, she leans her weight back into Bobbi’s side - the sounds of home settling her hurricane heart. 

After dinner has been cooked and served and eaten, Bobbi gets back up to serve seconds. More pasta for Fitz. Carrots for Phil and Yoyo. Another beer for Hunter. Without thinking, she spoons more potatoes onto Melinda’s plate, leaning in to kiss the top of her head as she does so.

Both women freeze. 

The table falls into a restless silence - all eyes on them. 

Melinda surveys the damage. Daisy’s lips pucker, barely holding back the questions boiling away inside her. Both Fitz and Hunter are gaping, forks held loosely in their fingers, food long forgotten. Jemma's grinning to herself, her hunch finally confirmed after Bobbi denied birth control after ticking the ‘sexually active’ box on her last medical. Melinda looks up at Bobbi’s horrified face - terrified she’s fractured Melinda’s trust irrevocably, that this second chance they’d found was about to come crashing down. But Melinda isn’t scared anymore. Slowly, she reaches up, grazing her fingertips along Bobbi’s jaw before locking their lips together in a soft kiss. When they part the table is silent. Bobbi rubs her hand along Melinda’s shoulder, a silent support.

Phil is the first to break the silence, banging his fist against the table, pointing at Mack.

“I told you they were back together! You owe me!”

Mack sulks, before reaching into his pocket and handing over a fifty-dollar bill, which Phil pockets with a shit-eating grin. And just like that, the echoing silence erupts into sound; Daisy howling with laughter as Mack moans at his loss, Phil high-fiving Jemma as Bobbi exhales shakily behind her. All the while, Hunter’s jaw is still hanging open as he scrambles for answers.

“ _Back_ together? When were you two together in the first place? Besides her wife I-” Hunter visibly pales as he meets Melinda’s smug grin, suddenly understanding, “May isn’t- Bobbi tell me your ex-wife isn’t the goddamn Calvary!?”

At that, Fitz’s jaw drops to join Hunters. Jemma closes it with two fingers gently pushed up underneath his chin.

“You two were _married_?”

Melinda locks eyes with Bobbi, smiling softly.

“Yes Fitz. Married.”

Daisy squeals, jumping up to wrap her SO in a tight hug that almost knocks her off of the chair. Elena and Jemma aren’t far behind. Mack hands Bobbi another beer from the fridge and tells her how happy he is to hear that they’re back together _\- even_ _if_ he had to lose fifty dollars in the process. To Melinda's absolute delight, Hunter's eyes are wide and blank as his brain fails to process their relationship; a _404 Error_ message flashing across his face at the sight of their clasped hands. _Good riddance_ , she thinks.

Later, Phil finds her in the Quinjet cockpit. He takes the passenger seat beside her, a well-worn silence between them. After a while of staring out at the hanger, he turns to face her with a slow smile.

"I am so glad Melinda. So glad.”

Melinda looks across the console at her best friend. The man who'd stood by her side at her wedding, and in Bahrain, and after her divorce. The man who had saved her from dying in a basement office, alone and bitter and scared. She takes his hand in hers.

“Thank you Phil. For everything.”

Dark swathes of cloth fall across the front window, to which Melinda’s heart hammers painfully in response. She’s stayed longer than was safe and the Reaper found her. She needs to keep moving to have any sort of chance at getting back to Bobbi, so she runs to the back of the plane away, away, _away_ -

__

The phones in the Triskelion are screeching off their hooks but Melinda’s eyes are glued to an imaginary spot on the ground. The fluorescents flicker above, highlighting the absolute horror on her face as she listens to Phil Coulson dying on Nick’s _fucking_ helicarrier - the open comms channel broadcasting his last moments for everyone to hear. She wants to scream, to yank the cords out of their monitor, to throw stones at the speakers playing his breathy laugh on repeat. To stop these people who never appreciated Phil, never loved him the way she did, from witnessing his last moments.

“I’m clocking out here-”

 _No._ Not Phil. Never Phil.

The selfish, dark center of Melinda roars at the thought of having no one left to remember her from before - when she was kind and warm and able to love, to remind her that maybe, just _maybe_ that woman still exists somewhere.

But her people are all gone. 

Dead. Pushed away. Moved on.

So she packs up her things. Cleans her favourite mug. Tidies her desk. Leaves the office during their biggest threat in known history. Nobody notices.

She drives to Bobbi’s. It’s not a conscious decision; a golden thread that twists itself around her fingers, pulling her home.

Melinda knocks three times.

Bobbi opens before she can knock a fourth.

“Melinda?”

Melinda’s head is foggy, her tongue fuzzy and too big for her mouth. Absently, she wonders when the last time she showered was. Surely not for a few days.

"Mel, what is it?"

“Phil’s dead.”

Bobbi sucks in a breath through her teeth, grips the door for some semblance of support.

“ _Oh_. Oh Melinda.”

And for the first time since Bahrain, she allows Bobbi to draw her into her arms. She feels Bobbi’s tears against her face but Melinda can’t cry. Won’t cry. Has nothing left to cry.

Days later, they bury him.

Of course they don’t actually, not when his body’s still lying lifeless on a metal table awaiting Fury to bring him back, but they don’t know that. Not yet anyway. 

Melinda almost doesn’t show up to the funeral - drinking herself into a stupor the night before, only waking to Bobbi’s fist banging down her door. Melinda staggers to her feet to find Bobbi on her porch, beautifully somber in a black dress, perfectly coiffed curls, and her best heels.

“I’m not going,” Melinda says, matter of fact.

“You owe it to him,” Bobbi replies and suddenly her head throbs and her heart bleeds and Melinda can’t think of a good enough reason to let Phil down more than she has already. Slowly, she nods, before turning from the open door, forcing herself back to her room to get ready. Melinda can't bring herself to get in the shower, so instead she slips a dark blue dress over her pyjama shorts; fishing herself a bra from within the pile of unwashed clothing by her door. She applies mascara with a shaking hand that smudges the edges, before stringing a row of her mother's pearls around her throat. Her hair is messy and she still smells like booze but it's taken everything she has in her to get to this point. Phil would understand. 

Bobbi, however, does not, and frowns silently from behind the wheel for the entire trip. At the church, Bobbi shuffles her into the back pew alongside Maria, Tori and Izzy. Melinda acknowledges no one, eyes falling unfocused on the coffin at the front while Bobbi talks in hushed tones beside her.

"She looks like shit, Bobbi. I thought she was getting better?" Izzy's never been one for whispering, her comment turning heads in the rows around them. Melinda can't find the energy to care.

"She was," Bobbi closes her eyes, gripping Izzy's hand as Victoria and Maria shoot worried glances at Melinda, "but Phil's death has wrecked her. She's drinking again."

Melinda thinks she may, in fact, still _be_ drunk.

The service starts abruptly and Fury talks about Phil's bravery and his honour and how fucking excellent he was at being the good soldier who followed orders and got himself killed in a way that, by extension, saved New York. _How considerate_ , she thinks to herself.

Melinda feels sick. She's boxed in on both sides - skin against her own for the first time since she left Bobbi. She closes her eyes and she sees outstretched hands and little girls, and under Nick's voice she hears Phil's wet cough and his self-deprecating smile as he accepts his death and she can't fucking _breathe_ anymore. Quickly she stands, clambering over the people beside her before running out the door and collapsing in the long grass behind the church, heaving. Alcohol and blood and bile all come up and it's all Melinda can do to remain sitting upright as the world spins around her axis. Her hands claw at her throat, pulling, pulling, breaking the chain from her neck - pearls scattering across the ground with a satisfying _pop_ as the necklace breaks along with her floodgates and the tears come streaming down her cheeks.

In time, once the vomiting stops and the panic subsides, Melinda lays in the tall grass looking at the clouds, physically and emotionally spent. Bobbi tried to follow her out of the church, but Victoria had held her back, shaking her head. Even so, Melinda can hear hurried steps clicking onto the stones walkway leading up to the church; Bobbi's voice calling out her name. 

Melinda takes a deep breath, and ever so slowly realigns her spine into an upright position. She wipes her mouth and clears her throat. Chews on an old stick of gum she finds in the pocket of her dress and breathes in the peppermint. _Okay. Okay. Okay-_

_“I’m clocking out here boss-”_

Only slightly off-center, she uses every inch of her specialist training to walk back to Bobbi. The other woman frowns when she sees Melinda approaching, but doesn't question it, only stopping for a moment to gently pick grass seeds from Melinda's hair. Bobbi holds out her arm for Melinda to take, and slowly they make their way back inside.

After the funeral, she stays at Bobbi’s. Bobbi insists and in all honesty Melinda doesn’t have the strength to fight her just to return to an empty apartment. They lie side by in bed - two ships in the night, battered and broken, drifting further apart in unforeseen waves. Melinda leaves before dawn. She moves noiselessly around the apartment, gathering her keys, putting on her shoes, stuffing her feelings down, down, _down_ into a little brown suitcase in her head, embossed with gold lettering that reads _Phillip J Coulson._

It’s cold outside. The sky is bruising black and blue across the horizon. Melinda takes out a cigarette, lighting it under a cupped hand. She'd kicked the habit years ago - after meeting Phil, before marrying Bobbi - but still, the smoke curls deep within her lungs, remembering her insides like a desert creek remembers the rain. Unthinking, she sets off walking, huddled in her thin coat, entirely unprepared for the February morning chill; for the gaping loss that Phil would inevitably leave her with. Melinda walks until her fingertips are blue, finding herself in the middle of an empty intersection watching the traffic lights change colour against the dusky sky. _Green. Orange. Red. Red. Red._

Slowly, she drifts away - a ghost passing through a liminal space - until her feet stand over freshly dug earth. _His_ grave.

And there, in flannel pyjama bottoms and an old academy sweater, is Bobbi, shaking in the frigid wind. 

"I woke up and you were gone," she says, eyes shining, "I had a feeling you'd end up here."

Bobbi walks over and slowly, slowly reaches out to hook her arm in Melinda's. It takes her three deep breaths, but in time Melinda relaxes slightly. Rests her head against Bobbi's shoulder, her hair pooling around Bobbi’s collarbones.

"I miss him Bobbi."

"I know Mel. I know."

Together, they stand tall tall as the wind buffets them from all sides. 

Together, they confront the pain they cannot fix.

Even here, Melinda can see the reaper’s form hovering behind Phil's headstone. Melinda looks at it wearily. Exhaustion has stitched itself between every one of her seams, and she finds she can hardly hold herself upright anymore. _Ten more minutes,_ she thinks, _please just ten_ -

__

“- ten more minutes. That’s all I need, Phil -”

Melinda wishes her voice hadn’t cracked, that she’d stayed strong throughout Bobbi being captured and disavowed and sentenced to a life on the run - but she couldn’t. Phil smiles at her sadly. Rests a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Okay,” he says, “I can do that.”

And so, when the team leaves the bar, she takes a different route. On the way, she slips a piece of paper under the final shot glass that Phil had ordered - still waiting on the bar as promised. A tiny note in Melinda’s scratchy Mandarin reading, _home._ When Bobbi reads it, she thinks of their apartment. Of their tiny sofa and the kitchen with all of the cupboards; how they would kiss on the bench, and cook breakfast together, and hold each other close while they waited for the old kettle to boil. The way Melinda would scrunch up her nose at the sourness of the first cherries off of their tree each year. How Bobbi would kiss her stained lips anyway, sweet as sweet could be.

Bobbi leaves Hunter and walks straight through to the kitchen.

Amid the chaos of the people and the dishes and the food piled high, she sees Melinda standing in the cook’s entrance - perched against the doorframe as if she owns the place. Melinda sees her and straightens, taking a step forward to embrace her tightly.

“You’ve saved us Bobbi.”

Bobbi starts shaking the moment she speaks. It takes everything in Melinda to stay strong; to allow Bobbi this one moment of weakness away from the team. Her brave, selfless love.

“We’ve- I’ve only just gotten you back.”

Melinda thumbs the tears from Bobbi’s cheeks, wishing against everything to have her time again.

“I know, Bobbi, I know.”

“I wish you could come with me.” Melinda’s eyes slide close at Bobbi's words. There’s nothing more in that moment she’s ever wanted more than to go with Bobbi. But Melinda’s made a family here, and her family still need her to keep them safe.

“I wish I could Bobbi, more than anything - but they need me here.”

“Fuck, Mel,” she shakes her head, eyes shut, “I know, I’m sorry, I would never ask you to give them up. It’s all just so _much_ -”

Melinda hushes Bobbi softly, rubbing her hand up and down the other woman’s spine.

“I’m not going to lie and tell you this will be easy - you know it won’t be. But when you’re free, come home to me. I'm not going anywhere."

Bobbi hiccups as a tear runs down her left cheek. She kisses Melinda firmly on the lips, before wrapping her up in another tight hug. Minutes tick by and there’s a loud knock against the doorframe. The chef Phil had paid off stands there with a knife in hand, sweat beading on his skin.

“That suit out front is looking around for you. He’s getting antsy for you to get back.”

Melinda looks at her feet. Bobbi won’t be free any time soon.

“I’d best get going.”

Melinda nods, meeting Bobbi’s watery eyes, before bringing their foreheads together.

“When it’s time, I’ll come looking for you. I swear, I will bring you back home.”

With a final sob, Bobbi leaves without looking back. Melinda lets the tears she's been holding onto finally fall down her cheeks. Phil walks up behind her, puts his hand on her shoulder in silent support. She turns around and allows him to hold her close, not unlike the way he had all those life times ago in Bahrain. But his embrace turns cold and hard, and his clothes disintegrate under her fingers into black whispery fabric - semi-tangible in the harsh light.

“Please,” she begs, “just one more.”

The reaper stares down at her, un-seeing, all-seeing, and nods once.

__

It’s springtime. Melinda can smell cut grass through the open window - the little white curtains they’d bought flapping gently in the wind. Melinda takes a deep breath. _Finally_ , after all of the death and pain they’d been through - her favourite memory. 

Melinda-”

Bobbi’s standing in the kitchen, brewing coffee at the stove dressed in a sundress under the soft blue sweater Melinda knows she loves, and suddenly she's right back where she started.

"Can you come and see if this is done?"

Bobbi's squinting into Melinda's cup of tea, trying to determine if it’s over-steeped. She always leaves it a touch too long, but Melinda doesn’t mind. Instead, she comes up behind Bobbi, chin resting in the crook of her neck and trails one, two, _three_ gentle kisses up to her jawline. Bobbi smells like the sea from her morning swim, her hair still wet, her skin still sandy. She smells like home.

Together, they sit on the faded couch with their warm mugs and tangled legs. Bobbi dozes for a while against Melinda’s side, tired from her last mission, happy to be back in Melinda’s arms in the little apartment they'd bought. Twenty minutes from the base, ten minutes from the academy - close enough to their work and to their family, but far enough away to have the space to navigate this new terrain. Melinda breathes in Bobbi’s presence while she sips her tea, slowly making her way through Phil’s battered copy of Ulysses. It’s different between them this time - a calming weight that travels up up _up_ to the top of Melinda’s head, and right down down _down_ to very tips of her toes - grounding her bones in place beside Bobbi’s.

_Peace. Peace. Peace._

The doorbell rings and Bobbi begrudgingly detaches herself from Melinda’s side to open it. Robin runs through, hugging Bobbi’s legs tightly before launching herself into Melinda’s open arms, squealing in delight.

“Mama!”

Melinda catches her with a smile and hugs her close.

“ _B_ _ao bao!_ I’ve missed you!”

Polly smiles from the doorway, no jealousy in her eyes - says she’ll be back on Monday to pick Robin up. 

As always, Melinda invites her to stay for dinner. 

As always, Polly smiles gently and declines; says Robin needs time alone with her Shield family. Melinda doesn’t argue. 

Polly leaves, and Bobbi tickles Robin’s nose with her own, making her giggle. Soon enough, Robin’s sweeping them up in tales of her day, and the new doll that Polly bought her, and the funny dream she had where her dog could talk. She takes both of their hands and starts to dance them around the kitchen, Robin standing on Melinda’s feet while Bobbi leads the waltz in fits of giggles and trodden-on toes. For a moment, the cracks in Melinda’s aching bones fuse back together; the Cavalry standing tall beside her lover with her daughter in arms. 

_Maybe,_ Melinda thinks, smiling, _maybe this is what I’ve been looking for._

There’s a commotion at the door, and suddenly Robin’s face is plastered to the window, watching Lola pull up on the curb outside. Phil comes in first, full of grins and laughter and _way_ too many presents for Robin - _oohing_ and _ahhing_ over how much she’s grown while he’s been away. Daisy’s piles out of Lola next, pushing past Phil to embrace May with a strangled cry. 

“ _Nihao_ _Daisy_ ,” Melinda murmurs into Daisy’s shoulder, putting on her sternest face so that she doesn’t cry.

“ _Nihao_ _Mama_ ,” Daisy replies softly, equally choked up.

After a year away heading up the first interplanetary Shield team, Melinda cannot physically express the pride she feels towards this young woman - the girl they’d found in a van all those years ago. From the start, Daisy had always been Phil’s kid. But for this moment, as Melinda’s eyes burn and her arms hold onto her daughter for dear life, perhaps Daisy is hers too. 

Daniel walks in behind them, greeting Bobbi with a hug and a smile. As one, they stand back and watch the thinly veiled emotion pouring out of their respective partners as they embrace for the first time in far too long. They watch as both women act as though they hadn't been talking for weeks about the other's arrival. Bobbi shoots a side-eyed look over to Daniel with a wry smile. _Typical._

Daniel compliments their house and enquires about how things have been since she and Melinda moved back in together. _Always thoughtful,_ Bobbi thinks, as she tells him of their grand adventure into domesticity. The bliss of waking up next to the absolute love of her life; the annoying little habits they’d both grown to love about the other. Daniel nods seriously, and suddenly Bobbi knows he understands the kind of love she’s talking about. As they chat, Daniel catches another set of eyes staring at him. Ever so slowly, he crouches down to introduce himself to the small girl attached to Bobbi’s leg. Robin’s always been a shy child, but Daniel’s kind eyes bring back visions of him saving her Aunt Daisy, and how he left everything he knew to help her family come _home,_ and suddenly she’s hugging him with all of her might.

Later, Elena breezes in with several containers of home-made food in hand, squealing at the sight of Bobbi and May in the kitchen and leaping over to hug them both. All hell breaks out when she catches sight of Daisy in the corner, and suddenly the house is buzzing with excitement and love and _I missed you so much!_ Mack arrives soon after, likely straight from work given the leather coat he’s sporting - a fashion choice that Phil finds endlessly nostalgic, and Melinda endlessly ridiculous. Finally, Jemma, Fitz and Alya pile into the apartment, loud and young and beautiful. Jemma leans in to kiss Melinda softly on her cheek, before barraging her with questions about her leg. 

“Are you still seeing the specialist I referred you to? I know last time you said it ached in the wintertime so I bought you some heat packs and I’ve written you a new script for the medication we spoke about on the phone. Do you still struggle to run? I've been thinking-”

Melinda feels her head begin to ache at the speed of Jemma’s questions. Bobbi shoots her a sympathetic smile from across the room as Fitz lays a hand on Jemma’s shoulder, instantly calming her.

“Maybe May doesn’t want to talk about this just yet Jem,” he looks back to May apologetically, “we made a cream for it, is all. It’s made from anti-inflammatories and pain relievers and a purple plant Daniel brought back from space. Might help you get more of your movement back.” And Melinda looks at them, these young, brilliant scientists fueled with a drive to make the universe _known_ , spending their precious, precious time making a cream to help her leg of all things. It makes _her_ feel known. Loved. 

She pulls them both in tightly, still an unfamiliar movement for both parties, and whispers softly.

“Thank you.”

Later, she finds Phil staring at the photo Bobbi had hung above the dining table. It was the first thing that she’d brought into their new house when they had moved in. 

“They were so happy.”

And they were - a candid snapshot Melinda had taken of Victoria and Izzy on their wedding day, both dressed in white as the waves crash onto the beach behind them. The sky a dark grey as they dance in and out of the frigid water, hand in hand. Bobbi comes up behind her, and Melinda leans into her warmth - sad and nostalgic and forever grateful all at the same time. Melinda looks up from the photo to watch her family fill up their small apartment. Her lover, her daughters, her sisters. Her cousins and her nephews and her very best friends. Those absent never forgotten.

Bobbi starts laying bowls of food down the middle of the table, and the team gathers around. This apartment, this family, this _home_ they had created was bigger than she could have ever imagined. Bobbi’s play-fights with Mack over a particularly large bread roll, while Phil and Daisy swap stories of their trips to Ireland and Outer Space and everything in between. Jemma and Fitz hold hands as they introduce Alya and Robin - these girls with stars in their eyes - miracles, both of them. At the other end of the table, Yoyo, Mack and Daniel bicker over football; die-hard fans for three different teams, refusing to back down from roasting each other at family dinner. 

_Children_ , Melinda thinks with a sigh, _the lot of them._

And Melinda? She stands in the kitchen basking in warmth they bring to her apartment. Bobbi turns around, dirty blonde hair cut short, long arms tanned from a summer on its way out, piano fingers held out for Melinda to take.

“It’s time, love.”

Without hesitation, she reaches for Bobbi’s hand.

__

Melinda opens her eyes.

Jet black skies pin pricked with tiny diamond stars shine overhead; their light mixing with the scattered street lights glowing hazily in the light rain. 

This is it. Melinda’s reached the end, she’s sure of it this time. She’s bled out in the dust encircled by Daisy’s arms and it's finally over - she’d saved the girl after all. 

Finally, it’s time for them all to move on.

  
Melinda turns her head to the left. Bobbi lays next to her, blinking slowly.

“Who are you,” she whispers.

“Your _wife._ ”

Melinda sighs.

“No. You’re not. Try again.”

Bobbi has the decency to look sheepish.

“Not as you knew me, no."

Melinda closes her eyes.

"And what the fuck does that mean Bobbi?" She asks softly.

“I’m dead Melinda.”

Melinda opens her eyes a crack. The news wasn’t overly surprising, considering.

“When did you die?”

Bobbi sighs beside her.

“Truthfully? About fifty years after you did.”

Melinda feels impossibly old, her knee aching for the first time since she’d died - the dull throbbing radiating out to every muscle surrounding it. By _God_ , she’s exhausted.

“Time is fluid, Melinda. You died in Daisy’s arms in 2019. Chronologically, I died fifty years after that, but I ended up here before you did.” 

Melinda takes stock of all the moments from her death until now that had led her to this exact moment. Bobbi making Tahiti jokes back before Phil had even died. Katya appearing out of the blue on their mission in 1998. Bobbi apologising over and over for failing to predict the side effects when the team brought her back. Their first night sleeping together being interrupted by a terror that had never been there the first time around; a reaper that Bobbi knew all about for no good reason. The pieces slot into place around her, and Melinda sighs deeply. _Of course._

Slowly, she places her hand on Bobbi’s face, lining fingertips along her cheekbones bones like a pianist lining up the keys. Bobbi’s eyelids flicker shut.

“How long have you been here?” Melinda whispers.

“I- don’t actually know. Time is a circle; an infinity loop playing out in every direction, forwards and backwards, all at once. All I know is that I’ve been waiting here for you.”

“But you look like you haven’t aged a day, how-” Bobbi’s features change before her eyes. Her hair, long and shimmering grey in the light of the stars; her skin creasing around her eyes and the corners of her lips from years of laughter. Her eyes, as vividly blue as Melinda can remember. _Beautiful._

“ _Oh,_ Bobbi-”

“I thought it might be easier if you saw me how you remember me.” Melinda breathes in deeply as a tear drips down Bobbi's cheek.

“And that last place, the memory of our apartment. Was that real?”

Bobbi smiles, a soft dawn breaking up the dark.

“All yet to come.”

“Phil - he’s alive then? And that little girl, Ayla? She's Fitzsimmons’ daughter?” Melinda’s crying now too; fat tears rolling down her cheeks at the prospect of her family being safe. _Finally._

“I can’t tell you much more than that, Melinda,” Bobbi shakes her head softly, “only that there are good things ahead - you only need to fight for a little longer.”

"Fight it- is that what this is about?" Melinda shakes her head slowly before continuing, "Bobbi, I've been fighting to stay alive for my entire life. I lived a life on Earth, another nightmare of a lifetime in the Framework, and now I’ve just been forced back through every memory my brain could come up with in whatever this is. I'm _tired,_ Bobbi."Bobbi's gaze slides back to meet hers, lips morphing into a frown.

“No- Melinda, you’re so close now. Jemma’s just arrived. They have a pod that can heal you, but you won’t make it to the ship unless you fight a little longer.”

“I don’t want to leave Bobbi.”

“I know, but you have to,” Bobbi wipes the tears from her cheeks, face scrunching up in empathy, “you built yourself a family back there, and they need you.”

And with that her vision is filled with Elena - lips stained black with tear-stained cheeks as she lies lifeless in Mack’s arms. She turns, and there’s Daisy - battered and bruised, sobbing over her lifeless body in that god awful temple. The world spins and she’s watching Jemma walk through the chamber, backbone of steel, face impassive as she approaches the destruction before her. Sarge’s body lies sprawled out and broken where Daisy had left him; Phil’s face staring blankly back at her.

 _“_ Why have you shown me this? _”_ She chokes out.

“You need to understand why you have to go back. They need you.”

“But I need _you_.”

Bobbi kisses her face. One, two, _three_ soft kisses. Melinda instigates the fourth, catching Bobbi on her lips, shaky and desperate and not nearly long enough to say everything she needed to. 

_Stay. Stay. Stay with me._

  
Melinda reaches out a hand, brushing against hard cement and engraved letters between her and Bobbi. Abruptly, she sits up, considering the ground they’ve been lying on for the first time. Two concrete plots lie beneath them, grown over with vines and wild daisies. Two graves, she realises, side by side amongst a world of vast greenery. _Their_ graves.

“One day, Mel, we’ll die surrounded by family. One year apart to the day if you can believe it,” Bobbi chuckles softly to herself, “but I did always say I’d follow you anywhere, so I guess it’s not all that surprising.” The lump in Melinda’s throat gets bigger and bigger, making her chest burn with every breath taken. 

In the beginning, she never thought that Bobbi, of all people, would stay. That said, she never thought that she would be the one to leave either, and look how that turned out. But the fact that Bobbi is here, in the place that comes next, telling her to fight for the future they could have- well. The choice, albeit painful as hell, has an obvious conclusion.

“Okay,” Melinda says, taking in a shaky breath, “ _okay,_ what do I need to do?”

Bobbi grins, head tilted to the side, eyes glowing like two beacons lighting the way.

“Follow them. They’ll take you where you need to go,” Bobbi says, gesturing to the row of reapers watching them from the tree line, “running gave Jemma the time to reach you, but now you need to confront the end.”

Melinda clambers to her feet, legs jelly-like, teeth chattering in the soft rain. Bobbi tucks her in under her chin.

“I- I’ve left you too many times already. I'm scared this might be the last time I see you.”

“I promise you, when you come back to life, I’ll find you.”

Melinda laughs softly beneath her breath.

“I swear I said that to you the last time we said goodbye.”

With a final kiss, Melinda pulls herself back from Bobbi. Wipes her cheeks. Sets her shoulders and lifts her face up towards the sky.

“You know I love you right?”

Bobbi smiles.

“More than anything.”

And with that, Melinda follows the reapers into the forest, into whatever comes next.

__

_We lay here for years or for hours_   
_Thrown here or found_   
_To freeze or to thaw_   
_So long we become the flowers_   
_Two corpses we were_   
_Two corpses I saw_

Hozier, _in a week_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this fic, and I love you for reading it. Please please please let me know what you think.


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